Redneck Memorial Day

What do you do when you have a Memorial Day barbecue to attend down the street and you are in charge of bringing the monster grill?

 Why, you channel your inner Duck Dynasty of course.

 The setup: One lawn tractor complete with trailer full of stuff, one red Radio Flyer wagon vaguely attached to the trailer with an old piece of broken ratchet strap. One giant grill precariously propped up on the wagon and attached with more pieces of ratchet straps.  

And go.  Slowly.

 Talking on your iPhone is a really nice Duck Dynasty touch.

 

And yes, we have video.

Closet Redo

This is my closet.  It is small and completely lacks any functionality.  That is why my husband has been banished to using the small coat closet in the hallway as his closet.

I’ve decided to redo my closet.  I was inspired by an inexpensive closet organization system that I found at Sam’s club for less about $85

 Notice the rediculously useless sliding doors.  Notice the one and only hanging bar that is placed at a very strange height.  notice the sagging cloth “organizer” stuffed with random laundry.  Notice the worthless plastic shoe storage system (that is impossible and painful to put together) which houses odds and ends.  Notice the ugly wooden dresser that is shoved in there.  I can’t even open the drawers because of the sliding doors. I have new plans for the dresser.  Stay tuned.

Step one.  I removed the stupid sliding doors.  I wish I could repurpose them as craft tables or something.  But since we don’t own this house, we have to keep them around in working order.

 Step two. Tear out the hanging bar and the shelf that sat over the top of it.  Since neither one was attached to anything permanently, I just removed them and kept the supports in place.

Step 3. Assemble the new organization system.  I was so excited that I forgot to take pictures of it before I loaded it up.

Step 4. Reload closet after ruthless purging.

 I organized clothing by sleeve length and color, added copious amounts of baskets to store purses, belts and scarves.  I even utilized the old brackets to add a bar for hanging dresses.  Since I only own a couple, they all fit perfectly in the corner.

Kept my old shoe rack but only kept enough pairs of shoes to fill it.

 

More baskets on the top shelve to store more junk.

Step 5. Instead of using doors, I opted to add curtains.

 Looks pretty, right?

 I love that I can look at my whole closet at once instead of sliding doors around.

I visited Portland and Seattle last weekend and was afraid I’d be leaving the summer to come back to the winter.  Well, there is still some snow on the ground...but summer’s hanging out too.

Happy Anniversary!

42 years!

Good job guys.  :)

My ma and pa are celebrating 42 years of marriage today.  According to one friend who commented on Facebook, they’ve now been married over twice as long as how old they were when they first got married.  Which, roughly translated, means they’ve been married for two-thirds of their lives.

My parents are awesome.  At being parents and being married.  Can’t say that about too many people these days...

Hope our kids can say that about us someday!

Ode to Joy

My sweet little Jaycob had his very first piano recital last night, where he played Ode to Joy as a duet with his teacher.  He did such a good job!  Love that joker.

My Visalus Journey

Just a little update on my journey with Visalus and the 90 Day Challenge. 

I have been on the challenge for 43 days and lost 10 pounds and 2 inches at my waist.  Honestly, this is just a seriously happy bonus because I started the challenge purely for the nutritional benefit.  One cannot live on fruit snacks alone, after all.

My husband lost 26 pounds in his first 30 days and is plowing away at reaching his goals.  He is having so much success and is so motivated that he has inspired a lot of other people to join the challenge with us, simply by walking around looking good.  Haha!

Almost immediately after I joined the challenge, I also decided to promote the challenge and earn a little extra money.  I couldn’t be more thrilled with my decision.  I made Rising Star in 29 days (which is actually considered slow in this business) and made a nice bonus.  I enrolled my husband as a promoter under myself and even though it required another large investment, we had recouped the cost of both within the first month. 

My team grew quickly with several friends jumping on board to promote the challenge with me.  I soon found myself with a team of four who were rapidly building their own teams as well.  

For the month of April I was painfully close to earning my BMW.  Painfully close.  I cannot tell you how painful that closeness was.  I actually could have made it without a problem except that I am a really nice person.

You see, one neat thing about the Challenge is that if you join as a customer and encourage three friends to join with you by the end of the month, you earn your next month free.  As long as they stay on, you continue to earn your free product.  Well, I made the decision to tell DOZENS of customers who were interested in joining in the final week of April, to wait until May 1st so that they would have a whole month to find three friends to refer.  

Sigh.

So if I weren’t so nice, I’d be heading to the BMW dealership right now.

This morning, May 1st, my up-lines all got together and called me on a conference call to tell me that if I could get two people to sign up as distributors before 3pm today, the company would back date them and I would get my car.  And the agony begins again.  So I will be on the phone for the next hour, seeing what I can do.  

I can’t even function as a normal person right now.