From a Cluttered Desk

I am Tammy Cardwell, she of the cluttered desk. (Hey, you think I'm kidding?!) I'm having a blast here in Blogland and invite to you to peruse my ramblings. Like a buffet, they offer variety - essentially whatever makes it to the top of the piles that sometimes clutter my brain. We'll eventually cover it all - homeschooling, God, our church, the Eclectic Homeschool Online, books I'm writing and publishing, conferences I speak at, the joys of grandmotherhood, and hopefully chocolate. Of course, this is only what's near the top now. Who knows what's in those piles?

You will note that I did not say we’ve got floors. LOL! Serious construction will, in Jesus’ name, begin on Tuesday.

SURELY it will begin on Tuesday.

PLEASE let it begin on Tuesday!

But we went to Lumber Liquidators today and picked up laminate flooring to go everywhere that isn’t being covered by the floor tiles I bought a week or so back. Is it the color I wanted? Well…no. Jack was never thrilled with the idea of going as dark as I wanted to go, though, and this stuff was…are you ready?

78 cents a square foot

If you’ve bought even the cheap, self-adhesive floor tiles recently you know this is a fantastic price. I am camping very happily.

Though I’d be even happier if it weren’t…you guessed it…raining. [sigh] My sister will no longer even come in my house thanks to the smell from the mold; a true drying out season would definitely be welcome. Well, that and getting the new house finished and moving in right away.

But we’re rejoicing at all God is working out, and we’re still…

Celebrating Jesus!

Tammy C

I’ve mentioned that one of the things I’ve been in search of lately has been innovative lighting options for the new house. I’ve been doing this for two reasons of course - saving money and getting something unique. I can guarantee that I’ll have a lighting collection that no one else has, and we’re definitely saving money too; I bought one of the most expensive "light fixtures" today. It’s for our entry and with tax it cost me $9.73.

It’s a metal basket that I got for half off at Hobby Lobby. I’ll remove the handle, turn it upside down, and there you have it. This Tolkien lover looks forward to hanging it in her home and thinks it would look great in Lothlorien as well.

And all this type of shopping requires is a little time spent looking at things upside down. Can you beat it?

Talk to someone who knows and they’ll explain that all I’m really doing is what’s called "thinking outside the box." They’re right, of course, and what’s funny to me is that it took our contractor to set me on this path. Me. Tammy Flexibility Cardwell. I had to be told, "You know, a vessel sink isn’t anything but a bowl sitting on a table. Go buy a really neat bowl and table." And then, a week or so later, "You know, you can do the same thing for the light fixtures that you did for your sink; it’ll only take a couple of bucks to convert almost anything as long as you make sure that…"

I’m almost ashamed I had to be told. I’m considering actively working on this - trying to look at situations and needs from uncommon angles. I mean, yes, I could have asked God to provide a traditional vessel sink at an awesome price and He probably would have done it. I could have prayed for great light fixtures and gotten those too. This, though… This is even more special. This is upside-down-out-of-the-box special. And I am having a BALL.

Try it. The next time you’re in a store, pick something up and spend a few minutes looking at it the "wrong" way. Examine it upside down and backwards and see what you could make of it if you had the need. The exercise just might prepare you for having a whole lot of fun at some point in the future.

Celebrating Jesus!

Tammy C

I found an interesting little site today. It offers Tetris-style games that help with geography. I played Stateris, which drops the states down onto a blank map in much the same way that Tetris tiles fall. Use your arrows to move the states left, right, and down. The novice geographer does have an advantage on the easy setting in that the states fall from the bottom up (For instance, Texas was the first to fall when I played.). I don’t know if this is different at the harder levels or if they’re simply faster; I only had a couple of minutes to play. If you place a state wrongly, it will fall again later. If you keep missing it, you will eventually see an arrow pointing to its proper location.

This site also offers such games for Africa, Europe, France, Netherlands, and the UK.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

Okay, so I’m not really with the band, but I’m really close to it. <grin>

My youngest son’s band, The Access, has had a taste of what it’s like to be on the road. Last weekend, they did a concert in Norman, OK on Friday night, a concert in…somewhere outside of Amarillo, TX on Saturday night, and then came back home for a concert in Channelview (outside of Houston) on Sunday night.

From what I hear, the Friday night concert went great. The Saturday night concert, however, was evidently in a brand new high school auditorium that wasn’t prepared for the power that amps, etc., need to pull, so partway into the first song everything blew and the rest of the concert was done by the lead singer with his acoustic guitar. Fun stuff.

Sunday night’s concert was a surprise to me; I wasn’t told about it until about 3 that afternoon (BAD son!). They played with Leland and another group and they did such a good job that they’ve been asked to do four more concerts as a result.

Walking on air? Yeah, I get the feeling they won’t come down for a while.

Celebrating Jesus!

Tammy C

Today was another big shopping day. There is SO much to buy and an almost ridiculous number of decisions to make when you’re trying to put a whole house, even a small one, together in a month or so. They say that in anything you will spend a combination of time and money and if you want to save on the one you have to be willing to invest in the other. Well, we invested some time today and saved a lot of money.

One of the reasons I’m blogging about putting the house together is to show how much you can do with a little bit if you’ll just let God lead you. The bathroom vanity and sink, for instance; you remember how much we saved and how excited I am about the unique nature of what I’ll end up with. Well, we’re doing the same with lighting, again thanks to the contractor saying, "You know, you can do the same thing on your light fixtures that you did with your sink."

So my sister and I went out today and scoured the shops looking at cool containers in a whole new way - upside down. We’d already determined that recessed lighting, which is what we had originally assumed we would use the most, would run about $20 a fixture. With this in mind, our double goal was to come up with lighting solutions that would a) cost less and b) be unique. (I very much like unique)

What we’ve ended up with so far is…

Three metal "flower pots" (that’s the shape, but they’re very decorative) that we found fairly inexpensively at Ross. They’re graduated and we’ll hang them at varying heights in my office. It will be a fairly simple process to drill holes in the tops and run the light kit through them. We’d budgeted $80 for recessed lighting and these pots only cost $20.97 plus tax. The light kits will only run a few bucks each, so we’ve saved a bundle and I’ll have something very different hanging from my office ceiling.

Three bamboo bowls will serve as our hanging lights in the kitchen. The insides, what you will see when you’re under them, are natural bamboo and will reflect the light nicely. The outsides are a lovely dark red lacquer that will work excellently with the color I’ve chosen for our accent wall in the living area. I spent a little more on these. They were $9.49 each, so $28.47 for the three. Still, that will put us spending around half what we’d have spent on recessed lighting. We found these at Tuesday Morning.

While we were at Tuesday Morning, we also found a self-adhesive floor tile that I liked at first glance. While I wasn’t actively shopping for floor tile, the price (54 cents a square foot!) was something I couldn’t walk away from. The sink in the bathroom has a verdigris finish and the flower pots I bought for my office have a verdigris finish. These tiles look like verdigris and I really like them, so I bought everything they had on the floor (May actually go back in a day or to and see if they bring out more) and plan to use this in the bath, my office, and the entry, possibly also a couple of closets.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. GOD ROCKS!

Celebrating Jesus!

Tammy C

It occurred to me that those who have been watching my whole home experience, especially those wonderful people who made donations during the recent fund raiser that was put together for us (It raised a little over $16,000 by the way!), might be interested in seeing our floor plan. People have been terribly shocked when I mentioned how small our new home is going to be, finding it hard to believe that we’re using it as anything but a short-term solution, but the floor plan is quite efficient and I am very much looking forward to having less house to keep. (To say I hate housekeeping would be to understate matters greatly.)

So I’m trying something new. Thanks to my wonderful webmaster, I’ve got a gif online that you can see. If I do this correctly, you can click HERE and it will take you to the floor plan.

Assuming that works, here’s the rundown.

The original warehouse includes everything from the pantry/closet/living wall all the way to the bedroom and back door at the end of the house. This is the part that is roughly 560 square feet. Yes, more than one person has pointed out to me that it is a tiny bathroom, but even though I’ve always had dreams of a spa type bath, this doesn’t bother me, because everything will work and it will not rain in on me. LOL! We have ten foot ceilings, so in closets and perhaps even in our bedroom we’ll have shelves up near the ceiling for long-term storage. There is a space for a stacking washer and dryer, and the kitchen is really quite nicely sized.

True, there is only enough room in the living for two recliners (What we think we want instead of the couch in the plan), but I intend to turn my cedar chest into a bench seat that will go against the wall in the blank spot between built-ins. This is great for me, because the cedar chest is one thing I knew I didn’t want to get rid of, but I had no idea where to put it. Too, Jack’s office will be right there, in the living area, so if we ever needed another chair we could just whirl his desk chair around and voila! (He loves the idea of being in the living, by the way. He’s already talking about setting the TV up so it can spin in his direction.)

The office, closet, entry, and porch are all an addition. We figured out that it wouldn’t cost all that much to add on, and it solved a major problem for me in that, as a magazine editor and publisher, I need SPACE. We’re even capitalizing on the extra tall ceilings (because there will be no attic) in this room, putting in a small loft. I’ll keep some of my books up there and use it for things like drawing and Bible study.

I’m really excited about the way the entry is designed, with what amounts to three exterior doors. You don’t see this much here in Texas, but it will allow a buffer in more ways than one. If someone comes over to meet with me in my office, they need never enter my actual home. Having worked from home for years and had to walk more than one person through my house, I really like this. This area will also be a weather buffer, which is nice during those two weeks when it gets really cold and you don’t need blasts of frigid air turning your toasty living area into a refrigerator substitute.

We picked up the building permit today (No reason to before now, since it’s has rained almost constantly for longer than I care to think about) and the plan is to begin serious construction on Monday. I would appreciate prayers that this finally happens, please.

Soon and very soon!

Celebrating Jesus!

Tammy C

Meteorologically (sp? I’m too rushed to check), I know full well what’s with this rain. I can’t even blame it on Murphy (re: Murphy’s Law) and the fact that we were SUPPOSED to be well into our warehouse conversion by now.

So here I sit, staring at trenches full of water and lumber that someone just now thought to throw a tarp over.

Fun

Celebrating Jesus ANYWAY!
Tammy C

Yep, that’s what we have. Holes in the ground

Of course, as is usual with construction, it took us a lot longer to get here than anyone anticipated. I mentioned a huge tree my son cut down on Saturday. Well,  what they say about trees is true; it was as huge under ground as it was above ground. Since we have to pour beams for the foundation (We’re adding on a small room for an office for me) and one of those beams has to run right where the tree was, it had to go.

But it took its own sweet time leaving. Believe it or not, there was not a stump grinder to be found for rent anywhere, so the job had to be done with a chain saw and an excavator. It literally took all day to get that one, massive stump dug out. The small tree, on the other hand, took one hour. My oldest had taken off work to do this for us yesterday and he told me last night that he was glad to be going back to his usual job, so he could have a "break."

In the meantime, I’m going through the house, packing for move, trashing, and packing for garage sale. That job is going about as fast as the stump removal did. Digging through 26 years’ worth of STUFF is no small feat, and I’ve only just scratched the surface. Fun.

But man are we going to have one massive garage sale in September!

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

We started the visible work on our warehouse-to-home renovation today. Our oldest son brought out a crew and took out two (one of them huge) trees before tackling the also massive emptying of the warehouse. We’ve lived here since November of 1981 and Jack’s family lived here for years and years before that, so you can imagine what all awaits us in the house as well. This move, for all that it will be across a matter of feet, will NOT be easy. The word of the day is PURGE. (If you’re in my area and want to come to a massive garage sale in a few weeks…)

Anyway…

The last couple of weeks have been busy for me in that I’m supposed to get all sorts of things picked out right away so that we’ll be ready to move when we hit each spot in the schedule. Today’s job ended up being the bathroom vanity and sink and I am THRILLED with what happened. I’ve wanted to use a vessel sink in a bath for years and had actually been looking at vessel sinks at Overstock.com. When I discussed it with our contractor today, he told me to go out and buy a nice table to put one on, so my sister and I headed to the local antique mall.

We found it. It’s an old writing desk (Truly, can you think of anything more appropriate for me? LOL!) that’s going to be great. Even more exciting, though, is that we were also keeping our eyes open for bowls, because the cotnractor pointed out that all a vessel sink is, really, is a bowl with a hole drilled in it. He said he even did a great little vessel sink one time using an inexpensive, stainless bowl from Walmart. Well, I found my bowl! It’s copper (I wanted copper, but they’re nearly $400 in sink form!) and has a unique shape and pattern. I think it’s faaaaaaabulous.

Even more fabulous is that the total cost of the desk and bowl combined, including sales tax, was only $88.23. That’s about half of what we’d have paid for a traditional, inexpensive sink package from the local home improvement stores!

Yes, as usual, God rocks!

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

I am extremely late announcing this, and it never even made it onto my speaking calendar. That’s just the month I’ve had, and I apologize.

I’m doing another online workshop tomorrow.  The title is "If I Had Only Known…" and it deals with some of the things I learned through time that I wish I’d known when we started homeschooling. Save yourself some heartache and frustration and come join us!

It’s at the Back to School Blast, which runs Friday and Saturday. My workshop is tomorrow/Friday at 3:00 CST. Other speakers include Jill Novak, Elisabeth Rushton, Matthew Rushton, and Cindy Rushton.

I hope to see you there!

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C