Thursday, January 19, 2012

it's cold!

Holy cow it's cold here! I understand it's January in Wisconsin but still...25 below zero wind chills aren't fun anytime.

The plus side to all this cold, crummy weather has been getting a ton done on our basement. We have carpet coming tomorrow and then just some wiring and finishing touches and it will (hopefully) be done. I painted Jack's room and the family room and lets just say I'm done painting for the year. I've stained 25+ baseboards and have 2 doors and a lot of boards for the ledge around the outside walls yet to do. I think I dis-like staining more than painting. It just smells so bad and I can't really crack a window.  I'm excited to get it to where we want it to be which is more usable space.

Not much else has been going on, just the basement re-do.  Boys are doing well in school and Chad still hates his job. Ben is such a sweetie. I really enjoy our days just him and me when both boys are in school.

I got the boys' chore charts done a while ago. They didn't turn out exactly how I wanted (more of a scrapbook feel) but good enough for who it's for. I found a pack of sports theme paper and Jack chose golf balls and Alex a hockey puck. I wrote the days of the week ad 'Things I need to do this week' then put it in a frame. On the glass we will write the chores for that week and the boys can put a check in the corresponding box when completed.  I plan on rewarding their work with some sort of an allowance, just not sure how much yet.


I also found an excellent way to keep all those photo cards we get at Christmas. I am sorry to say I have in the past thrown them away (gasp! I know) because where in the world am I going to keep those? Well, thanks to Pinterest AKA the reason I'm up 'till 1 AM, I found an idea to put them in a book. I just used things I had laying around and make this:



Genius, right?  Now I can store these books with my Christmas stuff and pull them out every year to see how everyone has changed. I really really wish I would have thought of this sooner. I have always wanted to keep the cards but never had a good way to. Now I can look back in ten years and see how big Grace was and then say, "Oh my gosh I'm old!"  =)

I think my next endeavour is a upholstered storage ottoman. Gosh I love Pinterest!

2 comments:

Mary Bano said...

Cute! We do chore charts and offer up cash :) never too young to learn about money too! So it's a twofer. They can earn up to two dollars a week-gotta start really lower if you start this early I figured...need to keep some leverage for later!

Mary Bano said...

Oh and bano takes Bella to piano and some other things here and there and I absoltuely LOVE my time with just Elliot. I walked to the store with him this Tuesday and it was sooo quiet and relaxing :) almost ernie but perfect!