My Hoarder Life

 

I have always thought I could become a hoarder if I wasn't careful. Today I found out there is no doubt about it I am a hoarder.  We are going to paint the loft in the morning. I knew that after 25 years of home schooling that moving all of those books was going to be a chore. It was. I thought I would be brave and show you the huge and I mean huge mess I created. I am also the one that will clean it up. Okay here it goes.

First the empty loft.

Now the room we painted last weekend now filled with loft furniture and books. Lots and lots of books.

I should have planned better.

I had to stack books inside the bookcases.

Such a lovely problem to have, don't you think?

Ron had to lean way over to get this picture for me.

What makes me think I am a hoarder, is how I feel about these books. They have been my friends for most of my life. There are books that my Mom bought for me from school and the price 10 or 15 cents. Or some of them I read over and over to my babies and my toddlers and my teenagers. They are part of my education. Mine as well as the kids. Some of them are junk too, but they are still an acquaintance. As I was cleaning off bookcases. I found this old, old copy of Gone With The Wind. It has no cover any more. But inside are the pictures from the movie in 1940. It was a copy that you could buy at the theater in the snack bar area as a keepsake.

 My Grandpa had it in one of his old sheds and I used to go out there and stand and watch him when he made fishing lures out of lead.
 He had this tiny little stove and his pan that he would heat the lead to molten then he would pour it into molds. I would sit out there and we would talk and he had a box and on the top was this old book. I picked it up out of curiosity one day, and turned through it and there was pictures of Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, and all the others. Since he never just gave anything a way, I had to make him a batch of cookies for it. I was only about 12 or 13, and hadn't really baked much besides canned biscuit pizzas and oatmeal scotchies.   He wanted chocolate chip. So I got my Mom's cookbook and made the best cookies ever. My brother's were so happy. I had learned to make cookies.

I took my cookies the next time we went over and he gave me the book. So today when I picked it up. I remembered how much I still love this book. How many memories are part of it.

I stood thinking as I looked at this mess I am going to have to go through again when I put them back.
I could sell them I suppose to Robin, my friend who has the used bookstore. Or I could just dust them and put them back. I have some books that are collectors editions. I also have some that were loved so much that the covers have been taped and retaped. I have my Dickens, a complete Grimm's Fairy-tails. I have a few sets of books that Grandpa found and yard sales on purpose and he would make his sales pitch for more cookies and being the good fisherman he was, I always took the bait. I remember the time he stood in his house straight and tall and quoted from memory "The Cremation of Sam Magee.

So goes the saga of my books. I really don't know what I will do. I have given the girls so many books now that they will need whole libraries to house what I have given them and it isn't even by half. It does feel nice though to go through them and to visit them and think about the things I have learned.
I just thought I would share with you my quandary. My great grandmother's read Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter she told me every year. One I still need to read. She loved her books as did my grandmother and my Mother. Now me. It makes me happy that now grand children come over and raid the bookcases. So hoarder that I am will be keeping my books, I just talked myself into it. I don't think it is that bad of a legacy to pass on, do you?

I managed to hook one rug this week. Now binding, will be another thing. I am too tired in the evening to have my hands busy.

Hooking is one thing and binding something else.

It is my pattern of Feed My Sheep. I planning on making this pattern into one I can sell in my Etsy Shop, so Ron drew this one out and we will see how brave I get about selling it as a pattern.

Just things that have been going on this week. I hope your June is as lovely as can be.
Thank you so much for stopping by,
~Kim~

“Like ghosts the children walked across the lawn on their bare feet. The moon was full. Above the damp grass hung a veil of mist, luminous with moonlight and spangled with fireflies. There was no wind, and the sound of the brook was very distinct, tinkling, splashing, running softly. It made Mona think of an ancient fountain, shaped like a shell, covered with moss, and set in a secluded garden. Something she half remembered, or imagined."
Elisabeth Enright---The Four-Story Mistake 

Summer Days

Last Wednesday, I found one of those cute downloadable lists that you see floating around the internet. This one was entitled " Summer Bucket List." Its still sitting here on my desk. Not a single thing written down. It gives me heart palpitations. Ron saw it sitting on my desk and said, " Lets sit down and brainstorm and come up with some fun things to do this summer!"
Neither one of us sat down and did it because we were painting. I don't know if we are just addicted to work or what, but I still can't think of anything to do except to do some from of work. I think I just like working best. I have a stack of library books to read, but they are still sitting in the place I put them after I got home. Unread. I am thinking of just taking them back so I don't have them sitting there shouting every time I walk by.

In the evenings after we get our work done outside we sit in the living room. I hook or bind rugs and Ron makes trees. He did his first show downtown in May. Its too hot right now to do any more shows but hopefully he will start up again in September. We both really enjoyed that show and look forward to doing it again. Here is a couple of trees he finished this weekend.

My pictures don't really do this one justice. It is a cascading tree down this piece of wood. The wood is a a bit of driftwood that our son Ben found on his last camping trip. Since Ben has been making knives, he has learned all of these incredible ways to make wood hard. This piece of wood was almost like paper and after Ben took it and put it into this thing he made. It turned this soft wood into something like hard wood, almost like petrified.

Ron's next  tree is one I think you would see on top of a granite mountain that has been hit over and over by lighting. Up in the Sierras when we have been hiking, we have seen trees like this.

Its a very pleasant thing that we do in the evenings. Its so hot right now, it is nice to have things to keep our hands busy.

As Ron always says, " Life is an experiment." So we continue experimenting, trying things that work and some that don't. All of it is good for learning and for growing. I hope you have a wonderful day.

~Kim~

“All my girlhood I always planned to do something big…something constructive. It’s queer what ambitious dreams a girl has when she is young. I thought I would sing before big audiences or paint lovely pictures or write a splendid book. I always had that feeling in me of wanting to do something worth while. And just think, Laura…now I am eighty and I have not painted nor written nor sung.”

“But you’ve done lots of things, Grandma. You’ve baked bread…and pieced quilts…and taken care of your children.”

Old Abbie Deal patted the young girl’s hand. “Well…well…out of the mouths of babes. That’s just it, Laura, I’ve only baked bread and pieced quilts and taken care of children. But some women have to, don’t they?...But I’ve dreamed dreams, Laura. All the time I was cooking and patching and washing, I dreamed dreams. And I think I dreamed them into the children…and the children are carrying them out...doing all the things I wanted to and couldn’t.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

"---I think all mothers dream dreams into their children---I know I have and it is more exciting to see those dreams becoming realities in my own children's lives than it would have ever been in mine." K.

A Update

I told you I would be back to give you a little before and after picture. Its really hard to take a picture of an empty room and see any changes. Here is goes.

Before

After

Granite is white. It looks so clean and so much better. I will shampoo the carpets tomorrow and let it dry.
Then I will start moving the furniture in the loft and all of the books in here while we paint the loft. Its going to be a long process, but it feels so nice to get things cleaned and reorganized. It may be the most used area in the house. Its where the grand children want to go when they are here and then there are the boys friends. It has so much traffic. With four of us painting on Saturday it went pretty fast.

 I had to get the down stairs all cleaned and mopped and all of the laundry done today, because I just can't stand when my house is a mess with so much clutter upstairs. I wanted to tell you a cute story though.
When Kessie was here, we were sitting outside and like we always do we were talking about stars and planets. I was talking about Jupiter and Mars and the moon. Our two year old grand daughter was sitting in my lap listening to our conversation. She asked me, " Where is Jupatee?" ( Ju-pa-tee ) So now, the planet Jupiter will forever be known to me as Jupatee.

I hope you have a great week. Thank you so much for stopping by.

~Kim~

“I think that love is more like a light that you carry. At first childish happiness keeps it lighted and after that romance. Then motherhood lights it and then duty . . . and maybe after that sorrow. You wouldn't think that sorrow could be a light, would you, dearie? But it can. And then after that, service lights it. Yes. . . . I think that is what love is to a woman . . . a lantern in her hand.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

I love Bess Streeter Aldrich.

Finally! Painting begins!

Today is the day. After months of trying to figure out what color of paint. Gypsum is the color I finally decided on and I hope it is the color in my mind. Here are the before pictures. This is William's old bedroom.

I never noticed how many angles these upstairs rooms have. Then I noticed that every room in the house has angles.

Here is the next part we will paint it is the part over the stairs.

The ceilings are about 15 feet. I rarely got on those shelves that you see that are so dusty now, because I shake so bad getting on them to clean them It takes me a bit of time to get over my fear of heights and I spend days psyching myself up. I just don't know who will paint this. Which means Ron.

I think with any job its the starting. There will be lots and lots of cleaning out. We have lived here now 15 years. Longer than I have ever lived in any house in my entire life. The boys are going to get their man cave.
I guess the lesson here is when you are the two youngest and you had to put up with the most from the older ones, you end up getting to have lots of room to yourselves.

Here are the painting things we had to buy. We haven't painted in 15 years either. So everything had to be new.

Hopefully I will get to show you after pictures sooner than later. Oh one more thing this made me laugh yesterday. I guess that now Bigfoots making themselves known. If the park service makes an announcement.

Anyway have a great Saturday,
~Kim~

“Looking backward through life, one can see the points of change like great locks through which one glides on a flood wave, so smoothly, on such irresistible power that one is hardly aware of any movement. But life is never the same again. One has gone through the lock and lives on a new level.”
― Mary O'Hara, Green Grass of Wyoming