Permanent Picnic

It's summer! Time for relaxed schedules and more time outside. Time for walks and swimming lessons and playdates at the park and picnics!

So why not bring the picnic table inside and have a perpetual picnic in your very own dining room?

 That's where this Moodboard Monday began. Lowe's has a great picnic table for less than $90!

Permanent Picnic by ellie1005 on Polyvore

I included a few things from our own dining space that are already in the room--hardwood flooring, large windows with sheer curtains, two built-in corner cabinets. Then I put in some items that are typical of how I like to decorate. Black-framed artwork, burlap, wrought iron, house plants. Then I had the fun of "shopping" for what other elements could tie the space together. The big round hanging light over the table, a couple more baskets and the jute rug were my additions.

As far as this actually happening in our house? I'm not sure. In a year we're supposed to completely downsize, as in sell or give away most of our belongings, so it's kind of silly to buy a picnic table. Did I mention we already have a dining room table and six chairs? But it's not a set that I love, so I might just sell it on craigslist and try out the picnic table idea. Why not?! 

Would you use a picnic table in the dining room? 

First Week of Summer

Hello and good evening to you, my dear friends! #namethatmovie

It's Insta-Friday, time for me to update you on our life (mostly) this week, according to Instagram. If you want to follow me on Instagram, I'm gibsongirl726.

Here we go!

 

1. My cute little cuties! #squinty

2. Look who's trendy today! #youcantseemystrappywedges 

3. Happy belated birthday celebration at Sabbath School! #itwo 

 

1. Now each of my little guys has jean shorts from holey pants! #smallvictories #mending #sewing

 2. This is happening! #shortsfrompantswithholes #sewing #mending

3. My curtains were high-waters. Now they're ruffle-licious. #icansew #kindof

 

1. Good morning! #onmywalk #notamorningperson #pretty #mtvernon

2. My walk today. #pretty #smellsgoodtoo #humid #sweaty #buggy #gladimdone #helloicedlatte

Family outing! #lemonberry #frozenyogurt #woosterohio

1. Josiah is getting to be a cute little talker! #ilovethisboy #twoisnotterrible

2. What is with boys and bugs? #ilovethisboy #gladitsplastic

3. Cauliflower is yummy! #mykidsareweird #ilovethisboy

 

 Spoiled rotten.

1. "Siah in." #hardtogetthelaundrydone

2. My oldest brings me happiness. #imeanflowers 

 3. The house that Jack built. I mean, Jonathan. #hefreaksoutwhentheygetclosetoit

4. My little worker! #whyihavekids #justkidding #notreally

5. My early morning snuggler. #latergram

6. Josiah and his friend Abby. #latergram

  

1. Flowers from my walk, blue ball jar from Walmart. And I learned it's spelled 'mantel'.

2. Weekly update #mantel #daisies

1. My view. #familyouting #ilovesummer

2. At the pool! #firsttimethissummer

3. Playdate! 

I hope you have a great weekend! We're headed to Michigan for a couple days cabin camping, then a week-long missions orientation. I'll be sure to keep you posted via Instagram-gibsongirl726.

Random Bits of Life

Sometimes you have these great and lofty ideas about what you want to get done around the house, then imagine you can style-photograph-edit-blog about it in as much time as it took me to write those few words. 

Riiiiiight.

This is happening. Slowly. My sheers were high-waters so I'm adding a ruffle. I have two of the four finished!

But for now, since I have lots of cell phone pictures downloaded and since I am not one of those fancy I-get-paid-to-do-this bloggers and I can blog about whatever whenever, I have chosen to subject you, my very cool followers and friends, to random bits of life, moments I've caught with my cell phone but not with my nice camera, things that aren't finished, aren't important in and of themselves, and that might not otherwise make it on the blog. But it's our life right now and I want to include these events and moments, so that makes them important, right?

Enough babble, time for pictures! (I'm sparing you the ones that got posted on Instagram--they have their own post on Fridays. Bet you can hardly wait!)

I love this series of pictures because it's so real. This is what our three boys do. This is what you can see any given moment when you look outside. 

But the story is about Jonathan, the oldest. He's always been the cautious one. Late walker, never climbed, hated the swing at the park... Until recently he didn't have a good place to ride a bike. We lived on a gravel road in Iowa and there were lots of scary hills at Weimar. Here there is a huge parking lot, not to mention our driveway and some of the school property where he can ride. Still, he was using training wheels. I expected him to want them off sooner or later, but it was much sooner than later. I also expected the I-need-help phase to last a couple weeks. Nope. 10 minutes with his Daddy is all it took! He was so ready and he does such a great job! You'd never know that two months ago he still had training wheels. Proud of my J!

 Josiah is a ham. He's funny and adorable and I could just squeeze him!!! Ok, so I do squeeze him. Constantly. I've never had a two-year-old without also having a newborn to take care of and birth to recover from, and I'm telling you, I love 2! 

Anyway, these jammies are from my mom. They're Harley Davidson jammies, and the particular store they're from happens to have the same name as my maiden name. All three boys have worn these and it's fun to have picture record of that fact. Besides, he's a cutie!

Spring is beautiful and I love it!

 Before school was out for the summer, Gary was on duty on Sundays. This Sunday I took the boys to Starbucks. The only one we have here is inside a grocery store, but it worked!

 Grandma from California sent a package! You can see this was awhile ago because there are stacks of boxes in the background! Anyway, these are pictures I sent to her while we opened the box and examined the contents. Fun times!

 Have you seen those recipes for banana no-guilt ice cream on Pinterest? We did it and it's pretty good. It's a tasty banana treat that has a similar consistency to ice cream, but don't try to fool anyone that it's real. You know? You freeze chunks of ripe banana, whiz them in the blender or food processor (worked better for me) with just a touch of milk, then either serve it soft right away or freeze it for harder "ice cream". It's pretty good and the boys had fun helping.

We painted frames for the grandmas for Mother's Day. Then we glued on star buttons because that's what the boys picked. Josiah got to paint star cut-outs which we also glued to the frames. Simple and fun!

Well, thanks for enduring that with me! Guess what? There's more!

Our Ohio Home-The Befores

 We moved here to Ohio during the last week of March. I never brought out the real camera so I never showed you the before pictures of our place. I thought I'd go through the fuzzy smart phone images and give you a quick run-down of our move and some glimpses of our house before we settled in.

We arrived in Iowa during a cold spell. We were there to get our things that had been in storage for seven months. We had two days to unload this storage unit into a moving truck.

We used ABF, for anyone interested, and we really liked our experience with them. It was far cheaper than renting a UHAUL and driving it a couple states, plus you get more space. ABF drops off the trailer portion of a semi-truck. You can take as long as you need to fill the trailer and call them to pick it up when you're ready. They take a few days to drive your load to your new place, then drop it off for you to unload.  

Loading was hard and muddy and the last day was stressful, but we were done in plenty of time thanks to volunteers from our church who came to help. If you were one of them, thank you so so much!

 Another storm came in on the day we left Iowa. We were ahead of most of the snow and never had really poor driving conditions.

We spent one night in a motel because we were in no hurry. It's always nice with little kids to break up the drive into more manageable portions.

It was still snowy in Mt. Vernon.

We enjoyed the architecture of the old buildings!

 Deciphering the circle at the center of town wasn't as enjoyable.

Not far from town lies the campus of Mt. Vernon Academy. Next door is The Hill Church with which we share a driveway.

Here is our awkward little home! At the left of the above picture is the playhouse, then the main house. The master bedroom is the one with the window AC. The window right next to it is half in the stairwell and half in the boys' room. Downstairs from left to right are the guest room, bathroom, awkward-and-useless front door, and kitchen window. The building on the right is a one-car garage. In between the house and garage is a mudroom that I'll share with you eventually.

Here you can see the entrance a little. The window downstairs with one shutter is over the kitchen sink. The upstairs window is in the boys' room.

 Mudroom

Door to garage from the mudroom.

Dining room and living room. The kitchen is to the left.

 Kitchen (click here to see "after" pictures of the kitchen)

Living room

 Non-working fireplace but a mantel to decorate!

 Main bathroom

 There was a lot of mold and it was really grody, but it cleaned up pretty well. I would like to re-caulk the tub before sharing pictures with you, so keep waiting!

 Empty guest room (updated guest room can be seen here)

 

Not sure why I didn't take a picture of the stairs, but you get to enjoy the mauve carpet in the master bedroom without any distractions!

Josiah in the master bedroom.

Tiny, funny, ugly upstairs half bath.

Someone want to sponsor a half bath remodel? I just need $200 to spend at Lowe's and a few afternoons of my husband's handiwork and you wouldn't recognize this space!

 The boys' room (that's the window on the side of the house).

 Boys' room (window on the front of the house). Please, please can we rip up the carpet?

Looking out the upstairs window to the front of the house. We have a circular driveway!

Looking back down the driveway to the church.

 Playhouse from the living room window.

The next day most of the snow had melted and the boys explored the playhouse. It isn't really finished and has some hazards to deal with, but it held so much promise for me that first day. I was seeing that my kids would be taken care of and that they would have a safe place to play outside! Yay for answered prayers!

 Two days later our new friends (thank you, Sam and Dan and Benny and Chris and Mr. Hall!) emptied out our truck....

 ...and our house was no longer empty! (mudroom)

 (dining room)

 (kitchen)

We celebrated our first sit-down meal in our borrowed home in Ohio with a glass of sparkling grape juice we got from Navarro back when we were in California. Yay for feeling settled!

Hope you liked this tour of our house when we moved in! It's always kinda scary and overwhelming yet exciting to see an empty house and wonder where will our stuff go? Have you moved lately?