Goodness. Things will slow down a little. I had four right on top of each other.
Stitches Thru Time asked for an article so I provided a foodie bent one. Zula is claiming the recipes as hers and that's just fine and dandy.
Highlights of the weekend bookwise?
Finding out we were in the Top 100 Amazon inspirational e-books. Now, I don't want to brag but being number 28 and currently beating TWO of Karen Kingsbury's books is pretty exciting for me...
Getting a copy in the mail, finally. So I was able to hold my book.
My cute baby grandson holding the kindle version!!!
First autograph!! Autographing my mom's copy. That seems only right since a) birthed me b) supported the crap outta me in my early writing years!
Getting a "YOU DID IT" proud of you card from my brother and his lovely family!
Having a friend order her copy on her phone right in front of me after church and teasing me about being famous the whole time.
Highlights of the weekend? Family dinner last night! I love my famtastics!!!! Laughter is the song of my people and it does a soul good!
Electrical being placed in my new bedroom. All rooms but my current bedroom's content moved to my current bedroom and I have plenty of room to walk. That's huge. We had three bedrooms full of stuff. Now it's manageable and most of it has places to go in our new "Wing" I'm going to call our section of the house the Lower East Wing. LEW for short. Ha. Ha. Ha. And we purchased the flooring and the new windows and a bit of drywall was nailed into place. Reconfiguring a doorway so that other things can happen. Hopefully cleaning a two-story house for next to the last time. I now will be fully responsible for three rooms and halfway responsible for two. I LIKE IT!
Giving tours of LEW.
What did you do over Labor Day weekend?
I worked like a beast!
We finished hauling stuff out of two of the three rooms we are turning into our new space so the kids can take over our upstairs. Drywall, studs, old insulation, carpet, disintegrating carpet stick on pads, it all had to go.
I pounded through the walls with a fire ax. It might be a construction ax but fire ax sound so much more powerful doncha think?
We then had to clean up of course. Jules and the kiddos helped tremendously. Those little buggars can get some clean up done when motivated.
Oh, and after we had loaded more stuff into our sons car for his Service Learning Group garage sale fundraiser, we had some furniture we wanted to get rid of. Before just taking it down the road to the Goodwill just to get rid of it, a friend texted me that a friend of her's son was just getting an apartment after rehab and needed everything. Uh, we had a futon, a queen size bed that we were going to probably put in the landfill because who's going to buy a used mattress from Goodwill ya know?
He wanted those and brought a buddy with a trailer over to get it. While we were waiting we decided to just go ahead and purge more furniture. We will have very limited space. My bedroom is so small we can only have a bed, a dresser and two nightstands or it's going to feel overwhelming. Our little sitting area will be plenty full with our armoire, couch and recliner. Everything else has to go. This guy took almost all of it. It feels real good that our stuff can bless someone who needs a little extra help.
After we hauled it down so they could load it up, after we got the last bit of drywall torn off the wall we all collapsed into hot, filthy messes but were all so satisfied with what we got done!
Sunday we got a bit more cracked out.
Monday. Wham! We killed it again. I even cut up some branches into logs for fire pit fires when the big remodel is done. Rob wouldn't let me use the chain saw for obvious reasons all of which would involve pain and blood. So I used his saws-all. Ha.Ha. Which he hurt himself with later. I'm lucky to be alive.
Oh, and today, Out of the Frying Pan RELEASES! Fern shares a bit about herself here.
I think the American Dream used to be centered around courage and strength and good old-fashioned grit. You know, like John Wayne style.
People weren't afraid to work hard and break a sweat and make a decent days' wages. Just enough, not too much, but not too little.
They grew a lot of their own food and food wasn't tossed very often. My grandma quipped after I took her to visit the organic farm we worked at, "We ate organic when it wasn't cool, it just was what it was."
Somehow the American Dream has twisted itself into collections and toys and possessions. And that's bothersome.
A few years ago I set a goal to get rid of 1000 things in a year's time. That goal was busted out in three months and I haven't stopped. Now that we are making room for four more people in our home the purging has intensified and I'm appalled at the amount of stuff we have accumulated because materialism had become part of our American Dream.
This picture is the second large batch of stuff we are getting rid of in just a month. And there is more in the room. I just took a picture of half of it. The last load filled my husband's pick up. And I have actively been downsizing and purging for almost three years.
This stuff is in the way of the life we want to live. Literally and figuratively. In order to make room for the ones we love we have to get rid of mere stuff. Stuff that required space, upkeep, dusting and hard earned money. Good riddance.
As shared in part one here we are downsizing big time around here.
I thought I had unloaded a lot while purging over the past two years. Oh, no, that was the tip of the iceberg. I've read about the folks who get rid of up to 90% of their stuff. The downsizing, minimizing super stars who transfer a family of five from suburbia to a tiny house, for example. Rob and I are probably at 50% and counting. And I'm looking around as I type this and deciding there is still too much that I'm looking at.
Instead of buying our little 700 square foot house, we have been talking with our daughter. She is able to and good at single parenting, but she has nothing to prove to anyone anymore, including herself. Single parenting is hard. We are involved but not daily. And we have empty rooms. So we've decided to leave our upstairs, hand it over to her and the kids and turn the three downstairs bedrooms into an apartment for Rob and me.
We will share a downstairs living room and a kitchen/dining area with our daughter and grandkids. She will have an upstairs living area as well where she can have people over etc. We will build a small sitting area in our little apartment where we can go to escape if necessary and to chill when needed. Our personal space will be about 300 square feet. This is our bedroom, our private living area and a den that will be invitation only where kids are concerned. Now a tiny house is usually under 200 square feet and that includes a bathroom and kitchen so we definitely have a space luxury. Our bedroom will be big enough for my big dresser and our bed and a few odds and ends. It's 9 x 11. The sitting area is roughly 9 x 9. Rob has some space saving creative ideas so I'm real excited.
We will have someone to share the cleaning and upkeep with. She likes to clean. I do not. We will have better meals because there is one more creative cook to add to the mix and a reason to actually do sit down dinners and go beyond quick and frozen meals most nights. We will have chatter and company whenever we want it. And the dogs will have company always. Our daughter can put the kids to bed and run to Target or meet a friend and not have to worry that the kids are up too late at our place or that I'm falling asleep on her couch, or paying a teenager to sit with sleeping kids.
Last night our daughter and I went through several boxes I've been putting off. Some of it was hers, a lot of it was stuff we had purchased together or with an idea in mind. We poured through old pictures, cards, crafts odds and ends, things from our gift cupboard and drawer. We got rid of more than we kept.
We have gotten rid of so much I'm honestly feeling very much like one big dresser and one bed, two closets and two bedside tables is going to be enough space. Right now my big walk-in closet is down 75% of what was in there. My big armoire (which is going to become a living area piece not a bedroom piece) is half empty. Rob smartly built drawers in the base of our bed when he made it years ago. Those drawers are empty. Two craft closets are down to 3/4 of one. The kids happily discovered and played Battleship while we cleaned out the game cupboard. What's the point of having too many games to go through so the choice is overwhelming? My three heavy duty bookshelves have become so decluttered I'm only using one and a half and when our den/office is finished most of those will fit there.
Our daughter has three kids and three years worth of accumulation. She is purging as much as we are to make this happen.
I just can't even put into words how happy this solution makes me feel. And I'm feeling like with every item I put in a box for someone else who might need it, that I'm making room for the important things in life.
Highlights of the weekend bookwise? 
