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One of our first homeschooling projects for E's Kindergarten year.If there is ever any doubt as to whether you can homeschool your kids, let my story encourage you and remove any fears or hesitations you may have! Truly, if I can do it, so can you.

Let me take you back to the beginning of my story… [continue reading…]

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Double Wide Bathroom Makeover

As I sit here on the couch resting a knee injury that I’m too embarrassed to go into the details about, I thought I’d might as well share the latest update we’ve made to the house. About a month ago, after finishing our master bathroom, I had enough paint (and motivation) left over to finish the kids’/spare bathroom.

Here’s the before pics:

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BEFORE

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And after:

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So much better! And the kids love it too.

On a side note, we are enjoying winter at the lake so much! We all bought ice skates, we can sled right in our front yard, and we have plans to start ice fishing soon. Here’s Matt with his new ice fishing gear.

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He’s pretty excited. And I’m excited that we’ll have lots of fun activities to do with the kids to make winter go fast.

In the meantime, coffee.IMG_20141216_090726176

It makes the swelling go down, I hear.

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Our Mobile Home Bathroom Makeover on a Budget

As I sit here on the couch resting a knee injury that I’m too embarrassed to go into the details about, I thought I’d might as well share the latest update we’ve made to the house. About a month ago, after finishing our master bathroom, I had enough paint (and motivation) left over to finish the kids’/spare bathroom.

Here’s the before pics:

image image

And after:

image image image image image

So much better! And the kids love it too.

On a side note, we are enjoying winter at the lake so much! We all bought ice skates, we can sled right in our front yard, and we have plans to start ice fishing soon. Here’s Matt with his new ice fishing gear.

image

 

He’s pretty excited. And I’m excited that we’ll have lots of fun activities to do with the kids to make winter go fast.

In the meantime, coffee.IMG_20141216_090726176

It makes the swelling go down, I hear.

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My Mobile Home Master Bathroom Makeover

Good things happen when Matt is gone! While he was in Seattle for work this week, I decided to tackle repainting and decorating our master bathroom. My goal was to have it completely done by the time he got home, which only gave me four days. And the best part is he had no idea what I was up to!

Now, originally the plan was that I wanted the bathrooms to be totally gutted this winter. I wanted new shower surrounds, toilets, vanities, bead board walls, and more. But there is something in my mindset that has changed. This house is turning me into a cheapskate. The reward of not changing all these things seemed pretty great. It would save a lot of money to keep the current fixtures, and probably more importantly, save a lot of time that Matt would have to spend renovating.

So with that said, I had my challenge; four days to make it great! Here’s what I was up against:

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I’m going to get right to the point. In one week’s time, and about $150, we were able to transform our kitchen from this:

IMG_20140314_171726 [continue reading…]

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I’ve been looking for the perfect nightstand to add to my daughter’s room, but it seems that the one’s I’ve seen in stores lack the character I was looking for or were far too expensive. Luckily, I was able to find a night stand at a thrift store (along with a few other awesome finds!) with the style, and price, that I was looking for. Let me show you how a simple paint job made this dresser shine!paintednightstand [continue reading…]

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Plan C: Making a Sacrificial Decision

Now, where were we? The last place we left off I was talking about how we decided not to do our garage project in order to put that money into the roof and exterior of the house instead. I was also feeling really excited about re-siding the house in blue.

Well, we’ve had a change of plans yet again. Matt said we need a new furnace before winter. The one we have is 20 years old and I guess they are known for spewing carbon monoxide when they are on their way out. So I was totally on board with the new furnace thing. And while we’re at it, we figured we should get central air at the same time. But I was shocked when quotes starting coming back between 5-7k. [continue reading…]

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Feeling Blue (And Happy About It)

Last week we had a guy come out and inspect the property so we could get our house insured. Unfortunately, he ended up being a bearer of some not-so-good news. The roof, which we were hoping to hold off until next summer to replace, is in such bad shape he wouldn’t even insure it. Awesome. We knew it wasn’t pretty, but “the plan” was to use the money we made from the sale of our house in town to build a much needed garage and home office area for Matt. I now put “the plan” in quotation marks, because the further we get into this new house adventure, I’m finding it’s not the original plan we had. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. [continue reading…]

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Our Double-Wide Renovation Begins!

Welcome to our little house on the lake! Actually, it’s a mobile home. A double-wide. But it’s our home! It’s been such an adventure getting to this point in life that I have to share it with you! I’m hoping that by tracking all of our progress on our new home that someday we can look back at all the work we’ve done with a sigh of relief and say, “We did it!” In the meantime, we’ve got a lot of work to do around here.

Our little lake house in all of her double-wide glory!

Our little lake house in all of her double-wide glory!

But first, the story of how we ended up here, at our quaint little double-wide on the lake: [continue reading…]

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Becky’s Low Carb Cafe Mocha Recipe

Since I’ve decided to live a low-carb lifestyle, the one thing I’ve missed the most is my dark chocolate Cafe Mocha from Caribou Coffee.  But with 45 grams of carbs per medium drink, it is more than twice my daily allowance for carb intake.  In searching for low carb recipes online, I never found a truly low-carb Cafe Mocha recipe.  So, after playing around with some low carb ingredients, I have crafted a delish low-carb mocha.

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