New to the Family

We have a new Family member!!!

As of Monday evening, Matt and I have a new foster child. I will refer to him as MS and he is 13.

(I will not list his name here since he is still a minor and clearly in foster care.)



We are happy to have MS as part of our family. We look forward to learning more about him and spending time with him.

It looks like he will be with us for Xmas and we are working on getting a list from him for what he would like to have.

I look forward to potentially throwing him a Birthday Party come Februrary and having all of his friends come over to have a good time.

He hopes to be back with his Aunt Michelle soon, as she is aiming to obtain custody of him. I hope that it works out but from listening to other foster parents at training, those sort of things take quite of bit of time.

Hopefully, it will be sooner than later and if he does get to be with her come Feburary, then all the better that he is with Family agian.

I will not be posting anything personal about him, persay. However, any fun events that we partake or stuff related to school and family activities will definately be talked about.

Looking for some additional help for after school hours and while he is in transition between schools. Hoping that we can make it work.

Talk to you soon!

Family Room Sections

So here is more of my work on the OHC.

As I mentioned before, sometimes a project in one room will lead to changes in others. So here is what happened while working on Week 21/29/33.

I was making a floor plan for my vision of the perfect home. Now this didn't specify exactly where everything went but it did help create a layout for the big furniture items. I was working on my Family Room desgin. I have a lot of items I wanted in this room and there was only one way to do it. Segragating with furniture and the like to make zones for different stations in the room. So after doing that I now have 5 specific spaces in our lower level, not including the open space that is to be used for different functions.

First is a place for Sewing and Craft Items location. I have a table workspace that fits nicely in the corner, next to my laundry room door(which needs to be cleaned off as it is piled with fabric and a couple sewing projects). Most of my additional sewing supplies are in the lower cabinet space in the laundry room (which needs to be organized but I will leave that to the Laundry Room week when it come us). The location makes it easy to transition between the rooms. My sewing maching is on a table and is easily movable to the open space in room if I need to work on larger project. All of my basic supplies are in the table space under my sewing machine or in a organizer within arms reach. I have trash can specifically for fabric, that way it doesn't have to be emptied all the time since it will not smell. I also have additional lighting on the ceiling that is directed right at my sewing area making it easy to see and work.

This space is also used to store my Larping supplies and costume peices since most of those items were either made or modified by me. It works well with our other costumes for conventions that all hang in the laundry room on a closet bar that was installed just for that purpose. (I will get to that room later as mentioned above)

Second is our mini Library space. This one really changed the look of our lower level. We always felt that our bookcases should be up against the wall. However, when we realized we didn't have to do that, we moved our loveseat closer to the fireplace, which is where we wanted it to be, it made it easy to decide to place the bookcases back up against it. Then we will be moving a couple other bookcases from one of our spare rooms downstairs and rearraged the books so that they were easier for my huband to access and vuala. A Mini Library. It will be more of an isle of 4 bookcases, with 2 on either side, but it works.

Third is our Fireplace Cozi. I really don't know what else to call it. It is a loveseat, a carpet runner and our fireplace with all of its supplies, which include the tools, the wood and its carrier, as well as candles, scrap wax and scrap paper to start a fire. I would also include the mantle space above the fireplace that runs the entire lenght of the brickwork surrounding the fireplace. The brickwork is fairly substaintial considering how small the fireplace is, but it looks and feels great. The only space that needs some organizing or maybe just made to look organized is the scrap paper. The candles look appropriate, while the paper is in a couple of boxes stacked on top of each other. They are not too out of place but as this room has come together, this has become more obvious that it doesn't quite belong.

Fourth is Matt's Office. Really it isn't an office but his computer and his desk where he plays games. So more like his game space. But since there is a fileing cabinet right next to this area, it felt more appropriate to call it an office. He likes it. It is right next to his books in the mini library.

Lastly is the Excersize & Entertainment space. Right between our laundry room and bathroom is a wall space that fits Matt's armour perfectly. We have since put the TV on top of it and are working to place the electronics inside of it: DVD, VHS & PS2. This is great since we have a hard base DDR board to play and excersize on. It slides right behind the armour when not in use and stays put on our open wood floor space when we use it. We also have 2 guitars for Rock Band that also fit under the armour perfectly. We don't currently own a drum set for Rock Band but I would find a way to make it fit around this space. A couple of the drawers will be for PS2 games. The rest of the space is currently unoccupied, which is weird to have unused space. I suspect that sewing and crafts may use it for stoage or I will put the extra cables and cords we have in them, but we will see how it works out. Then there is a gazell (excersize machine) folded up in the laundry room that can easily slide out and be placed in our open space for use and then put back away.

Each Space is important and we try to remember to keep them clean and organized so that they don't bleed into each other too much, regardless how big or small the space is. But it is hard when I work on a sewing project that I can't finish in a day to convince myself to put everything away just so that I can pull it all back out the next day. However, I keep reminding myself that I may not be able to get back to it again until 3 days later or even a week late and that I need the space for other things. It also makes it better for me when we have unexpected guests because there is nothing to clean up and put away or apoligize for.

Putting everything away for a long term project is a concept that is a bit foreign to me since my parents were the sort of people to leave a project as it was to come back to without having to spend the time to re-arrange everything that was needed to work on it. However, it will be advantageous to make this my personal goal to keep putting this away until it is habit. Then I won't have to think about it, I will just do it.

 I look forward to seeing how it will all come together in the near future, hopefully before the new year.

Love

Organizing Home Challenge

I found a site that I am totally obsessed over: http://www.home-storage-solutions-101.com/storage-solutions-blog.html

Taylor is an amazong organizer. She has both a Organized Home Challenge(OHC) that is 52 weeks long so that you can organize your home over the course of a year, working a little bit at a time at different areas. Then she recently added the Declutter Your Home in 15min a Day for the whole year. The calendars she has are quite handy and work in tandum with the OHC that she has previously done.

Then I recently came across this site: http://pinterest.com/organizemadefun/top-organizing-bloggers/

I was amazed at the number of sites and information out there.

So here are some of my favorites:

http://metropolitanorganizing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/12-mo-signs.pdf

http://metropolitanorganizing.com/managing-modern-life/uncluttering-your-home-the-first-steps/

http://cleanmama.blogspot.com/
http://orgjunkie.com/

I can't seem to get enough of the free printables or the ideas of how to organize something. It almost got out of hand. However, I learned to put it all in a binder, seperate from my Family Binder. Then I can refer to it whenever I need to.

Currently, working in the order that she suggested is not a bad idea however, sometimes I start a project and it grows into other locations that are not the following weeks task. For example, I was working on my Family Room, which in my house is different than my Living Room in my bi-level home.

This means jumping to a different week and figuring out how to get though the project and make sure that it gets finished verses being left undone. But I find that working on what I really want to work on is better than working on something that I haven't thought about before. If my motivation drives me in a particular direction, I intend to follow it.

I will post more about this in the days to come.

Holidays

Welcome to the Holiday Season.

Wait???. What!! You mean you haven't noticed since October how the greenery has been creeping his way into the seasonal sections at your local stores.

Guess what? It is here.

So why do we call it the "Holiday Season?" Isn't that just a nice way of saying "Welcome to Winter," which unlike the Holidays, we are not looking forward to. Welll, maybe the kids are.

For many, the Holidays are a good thing. Time with family and friends. Time to be thankful for what we have and eager to give to those we care about and even those who are less fortunate.

But for me, that isn't quite the case.

For me this is a time of the year where I hope that there is overtime at work so that I can afford to pay for Christmas presents for the dozen or so people that are in my family, based on how we prefer to do Christmas.

Most people don't know this but finances are tight. Very tight.

I look for sales and for cheap gifts without being too cheap, just so that it doesn't cause me more stress.

My husband has just started to learn how stressful it is for me to budget our household income. That is why he is taking over starting Jan 1. Which I am very thankful for. I get very disheartened when he asks to buy coffee once a week and I have to tell him no. Now he will understand better.

But then I hear the stories of co-workers and some of their associates. Without getting into specifics, I learned that despite how hard they try, between having children and some with no children, that they don't have money, after all of their bills, for anything more than gas for their car and simple and cheap groceries. And what I mean by that is a pack of hot dogs and buns for lunch for a week. Or a bag of salad for dinner for a week.

I never had to eat like that when I was little and I can't imagine doing so now.

I complain to Matt about getting a full time job, because it would give us some more buffer room and we could pay down some of our loans faster. If only wishing made it so.

Then I put myself in someone else's shoes. Then I realize that with Matt's part time check that he basically pays the bill for the groceries so that we don't have to eat hot dogs and salad all the time. Then I am more greatful than I can image.

It is a sad thing to imagine. But I am happy with where I am at right now that makes my like enjoyable for me. I can only hope that it just gets better from here.

Thank you to all my friends and family for being there for us and spending time with us when nothing else was in our budget to do. We really enjoy it and appreciate your time with us.

 Happy Holidays all!

New Directions

I have decided to take this blog in a different direction.

Originally I was creating multiple blog pages for different topics. Now I am choosing to combined a couple of them all here. There will still be one or two that are seperate due to the specifics of the material and the audience that I am targetting. They will be forth coming if and when I can keep up with just this one.

This page will be for my ramblings and experiences from daily, weekly or even monthly, depending on my mood. I hope to post at least weekly. My motivation has been off and on recently. Also I find that spending too much time here takes away from all of the other tasks that I want and need to do.

I hope to post these on face book eventually but to start I will test my ability to stick with this. However, I need somewhere to share my success and failures so that I can stay motivated. What better way to do that than to make it public knowledge to my friends on facebook.

Thanks for reading!

Defying Gravity

I had the fortune of seeing Wicked in Cincinnati on Saturday Nov 5th, 2011. It was a wonderful show. If you get the opportunity to see, go and take the whole family, because it is very family friendly. I would hesitate for children under the age of 8 because of their attention span more than if it was age appropriate. But every child is different, so you will have to make your own judgement call.

The broadway show has been around for 8 years now and as I was hearing the music for the first time in context, I realized that I had heard some of the songs before. The first was "Popular" and the other was "Defying Gravity." I think that "Popular" is very cute and simple, but also something that most teenagers hope for, while most of us realize that it doesn't matter in the long term scheem of our lives. So that song rings true more for them and to their current state of mind more than most adults. However, "Defying Gravity" is a song that can ring true to all of us in different ways. I thought of my own troubles currently and felt that what I was doing in some asspects was defying gravity or at least attempting to. I am a foster parent which is not a very common thing and my in-laws are not exactly sure what to think about it. But despite what they think, I look forward to the next child that will come into my life that I can only hope to have a possitive influence on.

So "Defying Gravity" is something that has happened to many of us at different times in our lives. Maybe it was refered to as "going agaist the grain" or one of the many words or phrases that represents acts that don't conform with the norm. This makes me think of the "Occupy" movements that are occuring all over the country right at this moment. I can only hope that what ever happens with the "Occupy" groups, that they prove that with a little effort that changes do happen and that every vote does count despite what some people may think. I also feel that these groups are proving a point related to the young people in this country, which depending on how you look at it, includes myself to some degree. Most seem to think that the youth of the current and possibly the previous gerneation is apethetic and doesn't participate in the community around them. These groups seem to be proving this particular idea wrong as people of all ages age getting together to prove a point.

Going back to the song though, I could almost say that this song may be a good start to a theme song/anthem for the "Occupy" group as a whole. Why? Because of what are they trying to do and they know that it isn't easy and it isn't going to get easier. They don't want to continue to play by someone else's rules and they are affecting this country in big ways that will be seen to some people and politicians as trying to overthrow the government. Those same people and politicians are the ones who are afraid of change, while the "Occupy" groups are asking for the change that those same people are afraid of. Fear of change is the same as fear of time passing every second, because no second in ever the same. Without change, people wouldn't grow up or learn or be able to experience the joys and sadness of life. I understand that some changes can be bigger than others but just because they are big doesn't mean that they are bad or something to be feared.

So how about we all defy a little gravity and enjoy knowing that our lives will change one way or the other, with the choices that we make each day, as well as the choices that are made for us by elected and selected officials. Live your life the way you decide and enjoy the music below. I have included the primary lyrics from the song as well.

Enjoy!




Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes: and leap!

It's time to try
Defying gravity
I think I'll try
Defying gravity
And you can't pull me down!

I'm through accepting limits
'Cuz someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I'll never know!
Too long I've been afraid of
Losing love I guess I've lost
Well, if that's love
It comes at much too high a cost!
I'd sooner buy
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I'm defying gravity
And you can't pull me down:

Just you and I
Defying gravity
With you and I
Defying gravity
They'll never bring us down!

So if you care to find me
Look to the western sky!
As someone told me lately:
"Ev'ryone deserves the chance to fly!"
And if I'm flying solo
At least I'm flying free
To those who'd ground me
Take a message back from me
Tell them how I am
Defying gravity
I'm flying high
Defying gravity
And soon I'll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz
No Wizard that there is or was
Is ever gonna bring me down!

Bring me down!

Ahhh!

Spell Check...For Icing?

Now this has more to do with the educational system but one of my co-workers was ordering a cake over the phone and they asked her how to spell "Congradulations." This was rather sad, since it is a fairly common word and I would make the assumption that a lot of their cakes get ordered for more than just Birthdays, so why was this one word so hard. I can only imagine the cake person getting that wrong and having to get someone else to correct it after the cake was finished. I have made a number of cakes in my time and making changes after other letters are already on there can be very difficult. But hearing that someone needed them to spell this very common word was new.

It is unfortunate to think we are getting to a point where machines and computers are making cakes and doing the icing so that spell check could be built into it, so that spelling errors would not occur. Is our educational system so bad that we have to verify everything, even the simple words? I hope not. I was kind of under the impression that we as a society were getting smarter and more advanced. I suppose that it is possible that like the income divide in this country that there is also a educational divide. I can only hope that as the reformation for education occurs that education for all gets better, since according to the world the US is dropping to an average of 18th in our overall ranking and subjects which is far from 1st place,where we used to be 20 years ago.