Spray Paint + Chandelier

I did it!

(More accurately, I asked my husband to do it, and he did it.)

My dining room has a new and improved look in the lighting department.  I scooped up my sister-in-law's cast-off brassy-gold chandelier at her yard sale, and bought a can of the highest quality spray paint.  Jason is much more better and fantastic-er at spray painting than I am, because he is picky about over-spray and tiny details such as I cannot find the time or inclination to notice.  He kindly agreed to paint it for me, after the project had sat in the garage for a long enough creative incubation time.  Nope, that's not procrastination!  It's allowing sufficient time for creativity to hatch.

I cleaned out the hardware store's rack of at least one style of chandelier bulbs, so not all ten of them match.  Maybe a little tacky, but when the lights are on, I dare you to notice.

I would post a picture of the whole thing, but I haven't figured out how to get a good shot of it.  Here is where you can insert a helpful comment. 

It's Not Exactly a Gift Registry or Crazy Things I Do for Fun

It's no secret to most of my friends that I enjoy running. It took me until I was an adult, trying desperately to shed pregnancy pounds, to discover this fabulous way to keep my heart healthy and my buns in check. My husband isn't so much concerned about his buns, but he loves to run too, and we like to race together. And yes, that means we PAY MONEY to wake up early, safety-pin signs to our shirts, stick in earbuds, then sweat and pant alongside a great crowd of other crazies doing the same thing.

We have friends who run too, and in fact were running long before we were, so we know we really aren't that weird. OK, at least we're not alone in our weirdness.

Last Saturday, we ran Pensacola's Double Bridge Run, which is a 15K (9.3 mile) distance that begins close to historic downtown, goes across a 3-mile bridge, over Gulf Breeze island, another bridge, and then ends at the beach. Since I was not in 15K shape this year, I opted for the 5K. See Lisa? She's well over 20 weeks pregnant! (And she's still faster than I am.) Her husband Jason chose to chauffeur us to our start lines and be on Daddy duty instead of competing. Post-race, he also did a great job of maneuvering to the nearest Krispy Kreme and buying a box of hot.

Here's Jason, getting pumped up for one last trip to the porta-potty before the gun. The poor dear looks so cold!
And here the two of us are after the finish. We had long cooled off, and had begun to freeze again, but we were happy because each of us had pulled off a new PR (personal record.)Racing is always fun, but training is not. I've had to rebuild my fitness since Quinn was born, since I was a huge slacker during the last half of the pregnancy, and the road has not always been an adrenaline-pumping success. I'm still working on endurance, but I've come a long way. One of my current challenges is fighting boredom. My body can run for a long time, but my mind can get pretty tired of it. And so.........

a tried-and-true remedy? I've started collecting! It's quite amazing what people toss out of their vehicles. Among the fast food wrappers, beer cans and at-home drug tests, there are some treasures.

My first (and most exciting) find was an aluminum 9x13 pan. At first sight I passed it up, thinking if I still remembered it at the end of my run, I would drive back to retrieve it. Then I thought better of my forgetful self, decided I really wanted that pan, and doubled back. I carried it the last mile and a quarter of my run, switching it from left to right and back again every hundred strides. It made the time fly, and I was hooked on collecting!
A few runs later, I found a companion for my pan.It's really not fit for dining use, since the tines are all bent out of shape, but what a great sandbox toy or plant poke or beginnings of a wind-chime!Wednesday I found a perfectly fine bucket to inspire some cleaning. I'll give it to Jason?
And today I found a grapefruit spoon, which is perfectly fitting since we have a huge box of grapefruit sitting in the garage and a shortage of grapefruit spoons.
Who knows what I'll find next run amid the litter? I have no desire to pick up the faux evergreen Christmas garland that has been not decomposing for over a year, nor the red camp chair that has faded to pink, but I'll certainly be keeping my eyes open for new stuff, and in the process, train for our next race!

Mama's Morning Out

This morning was glorious!! I got up early, ate my Grape-Nuts in relative silence, fed Jack, and headed out the door to the church's semi-annual yard sale to work my shift, since I was a contributing de-clutterer.

I had a lot of fun working with my friends. And I picked up some more stuff, other people's junk....funny how that works.

When I got back home after lunch, Owen and Helen came running, happy to see me. All three kids had gotten baths and were dressed in clothes that matched, and by "matched," I don't mean comprehensive coordinating outfits, I mean individually matched, that Helen's overalls and her shirt matched, and Owen's pants and shirt looked OK together. Jason usually does well with dressing the kids, but every once in a while, I will quietly pull a kid aside and swap out a shirt.

They had all eaten lunch, and Jack was sleeping. There was a floral arrangement on the table, courtesy of Helen and her daddy. They had picked flowers in the yard for me. Precious!There was bagged pasta on the counter. I had left a drying rack full of homemade noodles smack-dab in the middle of everything, and Jason had put it away and swept the floor before the kids got into it this morning. (Last night Jason was away, and I was making pasta with the ankle-biter battalion. Owen ate as much dough as he could get his fingers on; he even scraped off the counter where I had kneaded it. He and Helen took turns cranking the machine until Helen discovered the drying rack. She quickly lost interest in the pasta-making process, and there she stood by the finished product, rapidly eating fresh noodles. Jack swam around the floor and got flour on his tummy.)

The sink and drainer were empty and clean, and the dishwasher was running. You might think I'm some kind of freak for posting a picture of my dish drainer, but I'm just bragging on my husband!And outside, there were towels flapping in the breeze. Jason had done a load of laundry! I must add that all of his work this morning was unprompted. I was merely expecting him to entertain the kids, feed them, and keep the house relatively neat. He usually does an awesome job of cleaning up the kitchen, even better than I do, although I'm afraid that's not saying much, since I can be a tad lazy in that area. What a great guy!!!

And now another story, but I promise it connects with my morning, if you can just hang in there...

Last week I had a moment to run into town with only Jack. I stopped by the Economy shop and told myself I couldn't spend over $4. I immediately saw this dollhouse for $2. It was very dirty, and some little girl had colored all over it. I brought it home and cleaned it. My only disappointment was that it didn't have any furniture and was missing some windows and doors. I'm going through a Beth Moore study of Esther right now. In the whole book, God's name is never mentioned, but like Beth says, his name is all over it. What some people may dismiss as mere coincidence is God's providence. It's got me thinking of all the ways God has worked out details in my life. He has done some pretty huge things for us, like the timing of buying and selling houses and vehicles. It's been amazing the way he has led us and provided for us. But I also know he cares about the small details of our lives, and we can talk to him about the littlest things that trouble us.

Before I went to the yard sale, I asked him for some dollhouse furniture. It was a request mainly for my own benefit, since the kids are enjoying the dollhouse just as it sits right now. But, you gotta know me, I just drool all over myself at dollhouse furniture. I think it's so cute, I want to play with it myself! I knew I could be happy without the furniture, but I also knew it wouldn't have been a problem for God to provide it.

And look what I found:It's a whole new dollhouse, on a very much smaller scale, full of furniture and dolls. The front door even has a doorbell! A very sweet girl had outgrown it, and put it on the yard sale to make some money. God is so awesome.

And on another completely unrelated note except for the fact that my husband is so nice and accommodating, Jason ripped out the brown shag carpet in Uncle Phil's old bedroom downstairs. Now to tear down some wallpaper......