My kitchen window sill in the new house.

When the house is still,

Morning light greets my kitchen window sill.

It passes by the cupboard door,

Pressing a glare onto the floor.

Coffee brews with a whooshing-tink,

While I posture my thoughts at the sink.

When the house is alive,

I work hard  just to survive.

Endless clean socks to fold,

Four children ‘never-guilty’ to scold.

I protect, push and pray in each exchange,

Hoping for sad hearts to rearrange.

When the sun shifts with predictable ease,

Afternoon rays pour between the trees.

Shaded hours pass by in gusty whirls,

I dream and dance with my 1 boy and 3 girls.

As the sunset flees across the rooftop,

I kiss my husband – he makes my heart drop.

-jess

I know! I know! Enjoy them (my kids) while they are little! Well, I have had plenty of “enjoyment” with my two little cooped-up bundles of joy.

So, I want to share about something else I am enjoying around here. My new door…er, my old, new door or my new, old door. Oh whatever, here are the photos…cause that is what counts anyway, right?

Did we have an earthquake (in MN) while I was taking this photo? I am not sure what happened to my cupboard door, but in real life it did not have a freaky shift in space.

Keeping It Real Clause: That dry erase board totally fell off after the photo. I used *gasp* tape. Yea, that doesn't work.

Thanks fil Phil for your ingenuity! He conjured up the idea…and did it for us. Neat Pete installed the hardware. I, Messy Jessy, added the clutter, of course.

All in all, this corner of our kitchen is my fav, fav, favorite.

Okay so the good thing about not reinstalling freshly painted kitchen cupboards?

Time.

Time to see and study all the shovings done for shove-sake in the inner depths of my kitchen cupboardry.

Also time for Molla and Ry to bring digging in tuperware to a higher art form.

This week as been spent drooling over new hardware online but more importantly a whole new structure for domestic kitchen bliss was formed. That and a lot of TV and pizza. It’s cold okay!

I am thrilled to pieces to have a lunch making center, beverage “row” and a pantry that has food in it (not just for stashing anymore!)

Now what to do with the rest of the clutter I took out of the now stream-lined cupboard system?

Kick it to the curb! That’s it! Lupus foundation is coming soon…yes!

We are all suffering from head colds which is turning us into head cases which feels like taking 1 step back.

Here are some of our steps so far…

The wood-laminate flooring is in!

The bases of the kitchen cabinets are painted. Cottage White by Behr, shown here-only the first coat was completed. Bye dark brown 80's stain!

Cabinet doors- Washed, hand sanded, power sanded and stacked for painting. Molly is having a tea party with our medicine cups. Oh yes, of course our walls are painted too, Harvest Brown by Behr.

Well we can only take one step at a time! Though right now I am going to drink up my Airborne and close my eyes for sake of common sense! Though the dishes are calling me, painting, laundry….I’ll just have to let the answering machine pick up…if only it were that easy.

We are deep in the midst of giving our main level a face lift.  Thanks to my father-in-law (fil) Phil our new flooring is installed! It is so much better than the previous dirty carpet. [That will be his new blog name, Fil Phil.] It is so fun to see plans spring into realities.

We are over time, over budget and overwhelmed. We’ll manage but I can tell that I have some heart work to do as I seem to be fumbling a bit with my patience and grace during this challenge.

Kids

Meanwhile, my little guy just turned 4! We had a doughnut breakfast around a patio table in the middle of the living room to celebrate. His Super Hero party will be coming when I can have a tool-free floor again.

Kitchen

This morning I botched a double batch of apple oatmeal cookies I was going to send to Texas. What? Who knew that 1 cup of baking soda is not the same as 1 tsp.? Yikes!

Yes, that is my refrigerator in the living room.  So technically this is a picture of my kitchiving room.

Decorating

I moved my dresser into the kids room and made a mock diaper station on the top. Nice move. No pictures yet because it’s “nap” time which really is more like WW 3 this afternoon. We are going on 45 minutes of battle…still no quietness from either of them. Geesh!

Things I want to do but it might be too late (too cold):

• Paint a rehab dresser and place it in my room.
• Re-purpose a office hutch topper into a toy storage unit for the new living room.
• Fix up a $5 (garage sale find) bookcase for all the littering kids books reproducing in my home!

Sneak peek at my dresser rehab.

Bin-a-Week is making a cameo in the background.

That’s us lately. Have a good weekend.