a day in the woods...:

4 years ago today we set out to adopt a new member of the family.

We came home with the most precious little girl! She even had her own blankie and her own bed.

I can’t believe she was ever that small.

This morning I saw on Facebook that our local animal shelter was offering FREE adoptions TODAY. Little Man and I have really been wanting to adopt something cute and furry. When I saw the offer, I was all over that. I went to their website and sure enough – they had FOUR guinea pigs available for adoption.

I announced to the boys we were going “out”. Loaded them up and off we went. We joyfully arrived at the animal shelter and announced our intentions to the first employee type person we saw.

“We want a guinea pig,” I said. Little Man stood next to me holding my hand nodding his head as hard as he could and giving the employee man the biggest smile he could. The man responded, “We have guinea pigs.” He proceeded to show us to the right building.

We walked in and employee man came back to us and announced that they did NOT have any guinea pigs available for adoption. The look on my face was, well, it was that look that you make when you really, really, really want to just push the rewind button and have a different outcome and you think if you stand there with that look long enough that it will actually happen and he’ll come back with the answer that you were after in the first place. But alas, that didn’t happen.

He delightfully went on to explain that they had 2 momma guinea pigs in L&D nursing babies, but they were only a week old. We could go fill out an application and wait for the babies to be ready to adopt in 4-5 weeks. I looked at my 3 year old, back at employee man, back at the 3 year old.

Uh, no. 4-5 weeks was NOT acceptable. We wanted our guinea pig. We were not going home without our guinea pig.

So, we loaded up and headed to the pet store. And there we found not one, but two bundles of cuteness.

This is Cupid. She’s the feisty one. She’s still a little unsure of her new surroundings.

And this is Valentine. She’s a little older, calmer, wiser than Cupid. She likes to be held. You’ll have to be sure to ask K3 what happens when you hold them a little too long. Heehee!

Little Man is beside himself with his new pets. Big Man? (aka Hubby) He’s not so beside himself. I tried to explain how it all evolved – I really tried to do something GOOD. We did have the best of intentions. But these 2 needed a home just the same.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It was time.

Time to clean out and organize the pantry.

Waaaayyyyyyyy past time.

So “way past time” that I was too embarrassed to even take a “before” picture. I should have. But I didn’t.

Pinterest is NOT helping the “to do” lists around the world. Instead of getting shorter, it grows longer by the minute. Such is the case at this house. Poor hubby.

He announced that he needed to burn some vacation hours this weekend so he would be around. Wrong words to say to a wife who has a Pinterest wish list that is pages long. I got busy gathering up all my ideas and pictures for my soon-to-be newly renovated pantry. I presented them all to him one evening last week. He hid his complete emotional outburst of excitement quite well. Now that I think about it, he was really much calmer than I expected him to be. His only response was, “Oh.” For him, that one word can mean a thousand different things. I chose to define it as “I’m just so excited over this project I hardly know what else to say to you right this minute.” I know that’s what he meant.

This was my first step. My pantry has too many bags and bags are just hard to keep neat and tidy. I’m a baker. So the bags of cookie chips were the first to go. I have been saving jars for awhile – I just can’t bring myself to throw away a perfectly good jar. I put some of them to use. They now hold my cookie chips. What you can’t see is that I also cut out the recipes on the back of the bags and put those on the back of the jars. :) I’m just so clever.

The next morning hubby got to work designing.

His part of the project was to build me a fantastic new spice rack that would hold ALL my spices. They were everywhere and it was hard for me to know exactly what I had. So I gave him a picture and said “build it”. Please, I know I said that too. As you can see from this picture, the 3 year old was already busting at the seams to “help”.

My part of the project, other than completely emptying the pantry and organizing everything in it, was to PAINT the pantry. Some of my “idea” pictures had painted walls in their pantry and it just looked awesome. So, when I announced that I would also like my pantry to be painted, while we were at it, hubby kindly said, “Ok, I’ll buy you a paint brush.”

Oh contraire my sweet pumpkin – lest you forget – I’m allergic to paint. Actually it’s the latex. I batted my eyelashes as sweetly as I could and tried to look apologetic about that fact. It didn’t work. Here’s what he did:

Yep – that sweet man of mine bought me a WHOLE BOX of latex-free gloves and loaned me one of his work shirts. Then he said, “have fun!” And off he went to build my spice rack.

And then it got complicated. I have a 3 year old who LOVES art projects of any kind. When he heard the word “paint” he was raring to go. Let me make it a little more clear – he was JUMPING FOR JOY at the thought of getting to paint with me. He was under me, behind me, all around me. Finally, I had to pull the “Daddy really needs your help building my spice rack” excuse. It worked.

And I was off! It’s actually a lot harder than it looks – I got quite a workout contorting my body to positions that would reach under, above and between all the shelves. But I was on a mission.

Hubby finished the spice rack and I finished the painting. While we waited for paint to dry, I continued to organize and get ready to put it all back.

Thanks to a clearance sale at Kroger, which I stumbled upon on a trip to the store for milk, I found some great stackable containers and cute wire baskets that were perfect for my project! It’s the little things…..