Did I Hear You Right?

The boys were napping and I was getting in a little Bible reading time. I read a passage of scripture that I've read over and over, but for some reason it's never struck me like it did this time.
We all know the story of Saul to Paul right?
If not, go read Acts 9!
Let's not focus on Saul for min. ok? Let's take a look at Ananias.

"And the Lord said to him, 'Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul...'"

"Ananias answered, 'Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to Your saints at Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.'"

But the Lord told Ananias to Go and he did.

But this is what got me. What if he hadn't gone? What if he ignored that voice? What if he justified not going with how dangerous and life threatening it would be for him if he did?

What would have Saul's life looked like if Ananias did not obey the Lord? How would things have turned out differently? Would there have been less followers of Jesus? Less people reached? Less people ministered to?

And your wondering why this even matters? Because Ananias did obey the Lord and Saul became Paul. And Paul became a disciple of Jesus who made disciples.

But then I start to think about my own life. Have there been times I've ignored that still, small voice? Have I ignored promptings from the Lord? Have I justified ignoring those promptings with the thought that whatever has been asked of me won't really make a difference?

We need to open our ears. We need to always be listening. We need to be looking for opportunities for the Lord to use us. Because something small (or big) could change one life and that one life could change so many other lives.

We can't always see the effect of what God asks us to do, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is being obedient.

Even if we don't think it will make a difference, we can't underestimate a powerful God.
God took a man who was capturing and killing followers of Jesus, transformed his life, and used him to  bring so many to Him. He used the least likely to proclaim His Glory.

Have you listened to Him today?
Oh, Lord, open our ears to hear and eyes to see.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Is it too late to post about Halloween? Nah :)

Introducing the Wizard of Oz gang...

My friend, Kaitlyn and I decided to have our kiddies dress up in a theme and they were so darn cute! I still can't believe we got a picture of them all sitting together. I made Eli's costume which was pretty easy because it just involved some patches and yellow stretch fabric that I cut into strips to resemble straw. I wanted to make all the other costumes too, but in the end I'm glad I didn't. We just have way too much going on with this house reno. 

The Lion and the Scarecrow who wouldn't sit still :) typical!

I love these boys! 

The Tin Man aka Will

The Lion and Dorothy chatting

Kaitlyn and I decided to dress up as moms! I think we pulled it off pretty well ;)

The boys loved dressing up in their costumes. They kept pointing and laughing at each other. They also loved collecting candy (for their parents to eat). Eli waved and said "buh bye" as we left each house. Overall, we had so much fun. It was a great success and I can't wait for next year!

Now, for a little house update...

Here I am putting up the ceiling. I'm really happy we chose to do this. It is looking so good. 

And...the most exciting part is that we now have kitchen cabinets installed! 

I absolutely love how everything is turning out. It is pretty stressful making all these important and costly decisions without being able to really see it all together. It's good to know we didn't pick horrible choices and that it is all finally starting to come together! 

Floors are currently being put in. One step closer to being done.

Putting It All Back Together

Now that we have ripped apart our house, it's time to put it all back together. This is the part where I'd like to just hand it over to someone else, but that costs lots of money.

We are redoing all the electrical in the kitchen and living room. I'm so thankful my husband used to be an electrician and actually knows how to do this stuff. I get to be the electrician's helper. Which means that I've gotten to do a lot of crawling around in the attic and learned way more about wiring and circuits then I've ever wanted to :) 

Next is putting up the sheetrock. This is a chore! We have had several late nights working on this. 

These are the half walls we built to go around the stairs leading to the basement. Still have to finish them.

And, here is my new kitchen in boxes! So Excited!!!

The cabinets are actually being installed today! Yay! I'm loving how it all looks. We are on our way to being done. It will still be a little while until everything is completed, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

This Crazy Thing Called Renovation

We have been BUSY working away on our house renovation. And boy, It's a lot of work. After we got the beams placed in the attic, we went straight to taking out the walls between the kitchen and living room.

The demolition is my favorite part. It's a great stress reliever and it goes fast. It's the clean-up and putting the house back together that isn't as fun.

Taking out that wall makes such a huge transformation. The house feels so much bigger. Can't wait until it's completely finished and we can actually use this space!

 After we took the walls down, we tore out the entire kitchen. It was really a bittersweet moment. Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to get rid of those old cabinets, but living without a kitchen with twin 

1 1/2 year olds is hard...crazy hard. Yeah, I know! What were we thinking?

Kitchen Demolished :)

Now that we no longer have a working kitchen we have everything set up in the basement...and we don't have a very big basement, so it's a tight squeeze. We took our small kitchen table down stairs and placed it where our coffee table goes. My craft table is taking a break from crafts and instead is holding all the kitchen essentials. We are doing lots of microwave dinners and grilling. I'm using our tiny bathroom sink to wash dishes. It's definitely not the ideal setup, but I am oh so thankful for my new kitchen. It's all going to be worth it. 

Our make-shift kitchen :) 

It was a couple days after we took the kitchen completely out that our parents' took the boys for 5 whole days so that we could get a ton of work done without any interruption. Let me just say, I am so thankful for grandparents. You guys are lifesavers. 

After we destroyed the kitchen it was time to tackle the linoleum floor. Worst job ever. I spent 4 hours just trying to get a decent section pulled up. It was so stubborn and I'm so happy that it is gone. This floor had definitely seen it's better days. 

Goodbye, You won't be missed, Linoleum!

Now that we have torn the house apart, we just need to get it all put back together. :) Should be no problem, right? Cabinets are being installed on Tuesday. Countdown has begun. Ahhhhh!

Beams and Flooring and Ceilings, Oh My!

So the other day we went and picked up our flooring from Lowe's and also got wood from Menards for the beams Brian is making so that we can take down some walls.

Our Trailer- Load

Oh, and we bought kitchen knobs and pulls at Menards too! The boys really enjoyed this shopping trip.

Brian let them stand in the cart while he pushed them. I was freaking out and telling him it was dangerous, but I let them have fun anyway and took a picture. 

Ok so now for a sneak peak...of the flooring!

It is called Handscraped Vintage Antique Bamboo (from Lowe's).

Now to the dirty work...We have popcorn ceilings in our living room and since our kitchen does not have popcorn ceilings and we are taking a wall down we needed to do something. So naturally, we decided to scrape the popcorn off of the ceilings. 

I taped the whole room off in plastic. They sell plastic with painter's tape already attached, but I didn't buy it because, well, it was more expensive. It would have saved me a ton of time though, and probably would have been worth it. The things we learn. :)

Brian, getting ready to enter the Room of Doom (literally).

My popcorn-scraping Hero. 

I helped too. We were in it together. It was terrible. I mean really terrible. It was hot and hard and I never want to scrape a ceiling again. But, we did it. 

The couple who scrapes ceilings together, stays together :)

It made an absolute mess.

After all that hard work, I started sanding the ceiling so that we could make them match our other flat ceiling. After 10 mins. I knew this job would take me days. So we decided, "why not buy tongue and groove wood to put on the ceilings?" 

I think it is going to look great. Brian wants to leave it natural and I want to paint it white. Any opinions or suggestions???

Brian built beams to put in the attic so that we could take the wall down between the living room and kitchen. With the help of friends, he was able to get them on the roof and installed in the attic. 

This is me on the roof pretending to lift a heavy beam. The funny thing is that my legs look disconnected from my body. Photo credit: Brian. Well played, Husband, well played.

Up next...Walls will be coming down! :)

It's Just the Beginning

A couple weeks ago we officially purchased cabinets, counters, appliances, and flooring all at Lowe's. We are going to completely redo our kitchen and dining/living room. It's a pretty big deal and I'm really excited for the new kitchen part. Getting there is going to be a little difficult.

Here is a picture of the night we took the boys to purchase cabinets. It was a huge mistake. I thought since we had already picked everything out that it wouldn't take very long to purchase it. WRONG. We spent 2 1/2 hours chasing the boys around Lowe's. They were thrilled and we were pulling our hair out. They were enthralled with the kitchen section because they have all the sample kitchens on display. They spent a good part of the evening opening all the cabinet doors and slamming them shut. There was also plenty of screaming, running away, and melt-downs. We started thinking that maybe a kitchen was not worth all this hassle. But, alas, we survived and bought a kitchen :) Whew!

And then this happened.... All my furniture is in here.
My house is empty.
My kitchen is in boxes.

 I'm trying to figure out why I thought now would be a good time to renovate a house with two 1 1/2 year olds.  Oh right, I'm desperate for a dishwasher and a working oven. :) Seriously!

We pulled up all the flooring in the hallway and dining/living room. Next on the list is scraping the popcorn ceiling and putting in support beams so we can take the wall down between the kitchen and dining/living room. Exciting stuff!

Now enough about renovating...
Last week I went to spend some time with my mom, because the husband was working a whole 2 weeks of 12 hour shifts. I had a wonderful time with her and it was so nice having someone to help me corral the boys. One of the best parts was going to Deanna Rose Farmstead with the cousins. The boys were right at home. They were so thrilled to see the animals and kept sticking their fingers through the fence so the goats could nibble on them and then laughed about it.

My Farmer Boys

I love seeing how sweet the older cousins are to the boys. They love on them and play with them and are pretty much the best little helpers ever (see below).

Hello, Fall

As soon as we had some cool weather show up, I decided it was time to pull out the fall decor. It really doesn't matter that it's currently 79 degrees and I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt as I write this post. :)
Fall is my absolute favorite season. I love it so much I've started wearing fall clothes and then realize half way through the day that I'm sweating and uncomfortably hot.

Anyway, back to fall decor. Here's a few things I've put out so far:

Aren't these painted pine cones so fun? No I did not paint them myself. I bought them (they were only 50 cents). Unfortunately, I didn't have any of my own pine cones laying around that need painting. 

I got this little cutie from a local boutique. If you are from this area go check out the Rusted Rooster in Andover. You won't be disappointed. They had a ton of great fall decor. (It's also where I found those pinecones for 50 cents)

Sign painted by me! I'm really enjoying this making signs thing. It's way too fun. Maybe someday when life with twins isn't so crazy I'll actually make some to sell....oh Dreams!

This is what the whole setup looks like right now. Nothing too fancy.

This is a free fall printable. I just popped it in a frame and wha-laa...a cheap, easy, cute fall decoration. You can get the same one right HERE. There are a bunch of other free printables too. Go check it out. 

That's pretty much all I have done so far. It's bittersweet though, because this weekend we are having a pod delivered to our house so that we can store all our living/dining room furniture, which means I'll have to put all the decorations away. We are getting ready to do some major demolition to our house. We purchased our new kitchen (YAY!) and now as we wait on the cabinets we have a whole list of other projects to do, such as scraping the popcorn ceiling (not really looking forward to that).