Going Green

My favorite place to be this summer is here.

Rusty's favorite place to be this summer is here:

Show us where you live: Master Bedroom

UPDATE:

I've painted (again). I'll get new pictures taken soon but here's a sneak peek:

http://601hicksfamily.blogspot.com/2010/01/movers-painters.html

ORIGINAL POST:

Kelly's "Show Us" this week: Master Bedrooms.

Love having drawers in my night stand. It is packed full.
(And yes, we have carpet in the bedrooms. Rusty wanted to carpet the entire house, I wanted wood throughout the house. So we compromised and put carpet in all of the bedrooms.)


Love this one. It is right above where I 'put on' my watch and wedding ring and such a great reminder of what the most important thing to 'put on' each day is.We are looking for a sconce to put on Rusty's side. Love some of the Pottery Barn ones.... anyone know where we can find a cheaper version? :)



The picture on the "live" shelf is just a reminder for me to print the picture I actually want to put in there. I finally put in the order for it yesterday.

Thought it would be fun to hang magazines here.... turns out we don't own any magazines so I had to use catalogs instead... oops.

Progress

Yes, we are slowly making progress on our house projects....

No, we didn't do any complaining (that I can remember).

No, I don't have anything to blog about tonight.

Yes, I'm only putting up a post to check the DISQUS out.....

Complaining

"Do all things without complaining or disputing." Phillipians 2:13


This is our verse for the week. Can you guess what we are working on? If you said house projects, you win. We started on our summer project list last week (yes, we should have had this verse up then) and our house is in disaster mode right now. We'll see how much of our list we can get done this week. Without. Complaining. or. Disputing.

601

I chose our blogspot with the number 601 simply because "hicksfamily" was taken and 601 was the first number that popped into my head.

601 is where we live.

R pointed out to me that 601 is also the address of where we met.

And on 6/01 I got this text from R:
'Just discovered that im ready to a full-time christian i know weird time and place but it was like God was talking 2 me thats the gist of it luv u'


God is good and while life isn't always easy, it's always a blessing. God has been at work in our lives and we are seeing it every day. It's a full-time job for God.

Are we committed to working full-time for Him?

We are called to repent, to turn toward God. In the midst of our crazy, busy lives do we find time to find God? Do we make time to find God?
Do we turn toward Christ not just at church but in everything we do from the time we get up in the morning until the time we go to bed at night?
Do we make a full-time commitment to reorient our lives towards Him, not just for an hour, a day, or a week, but full-time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year?

My prayer today is that God will work in our lives so that we can in-deed be 'full-time.'

mitigation

I had an amazing time last week in Arizona and I'm very blessed to have a job that I (mostly) love. However, the lack of sleep, heavy workload, and stress that the end of the school year brings is causing me to go a little lotta crazy.

Tonight, however, I put my paper work aside for a few hours, started a load of laundry, and sat down to finish reading my book I started on the plane last week.

Just me.

my book.

and my porch swing.

(oh... and my dog... but he thankfully sat quietly on the end of the porch all night and watched a tractor in the field down the road).

ahhhhhhh.

Honey Do

Oh.... and while I was gone my amazing hubs got quite a few things done around the house. Most exciting.. hung a swing on the front porch and put together our new bed. I'll have to post pics soon!
And don't worry about him slaving away all weekend. He managed to find time for 27 holes of golf!

turf

We finally have a yard. A real one. With grass.

Living Room

Updated 7/16/09:
I found this treasure on the way home yesterday. It's a medical supply trunk. Nifty, huh?


Original Post as follows:

Kelly's:Our work in progress living room. That we love. Despite the changes we'd like to someday make! View by fireplace/breakfast room that faces entry/dining room (yes, Rusty and Dakota are both lounging/watching baseball tonight... they decided they didn't want to be in blog pictures so got up!). I'm looking for a bench for the entry.... any ideas? View from kitchen hallway. Yep, that's Dakota's bed by the tv. He can't miss out on anything.
Oh... and the tv? Yes, that is supposed to be in our family room.... in the basement. Someday it will get there.
View from entry. I love how everything is open. My kitchen sink faces the living room.
Our big comfy couch. I love how so many people can pile into it. And how Rusty & I can both take a nap on it at the same time. Soooo comfy.
Still looking for a coffee table (possibly a trunk?) that is 30x30. Any ideas for me?? I posted about it awhile back but it's a cheapo from IKEA that I painted because I couldn't find anything else. Still looking!!
And here's our family room. :) We had every intention of finishing it once we moved in. (Have I mentioned that my husband built our house? Literally built it with his own hands?? Let's just say after that job, we haven't so much been in the mood to tackle the basement project!) :-)

Kitchen:

our favorite room in the house (maybe because we spend so much time in it...)
Kelly started a "tour of homes." Up first: Kitchens.


Some of my favorite things- Grandma's butter churn:
Most of my recipes are printed off the computer from emails or jotted down on sticky notes. I hide them in the box on the bottom shelf until I have time to transfer them to the recipe cards. I only use one cook book and it's one our family made. That's why I'm putting together another family/friends cookbook because those are the only other recipes I use!
Another favorite- sink that hides a ton of dishes:
Everyone asks us if we use our breakfast room much. YES.
This is where we always eat unless we have people over then we eat in our actual dining room.
And of course I had to add my pantry. It is the hub of our house. And thanks to the chalk board paint on the back of the door, it's also a popular spot for the kidlins when they come over.
I love it so much I'm writing a book about it.... stay tuned.

And Kelly is right. We all have so much to be thankful for. I'll post more on Compassion later. But until then, check it out.

Stimulus

Rusty & I just got back from doing our part to stimulate the economy.... We are pretty confident that GAP and a few other stores will be safe for awhile longer after our purchases. While we I spent way too much money on clothes/shoes/accessories.... I did manage to find a few house finds as well! Here are a couple updates we made..... yes, I managed to pull Rusty away from basketball for a few minutes to help!I have been looking for an area rug since before we finished building the house. It was not a successful hunt. We found this rug for super cheap at IKEA and decided it was better than nothing and IF I do happen to find one I like in the near future, I've already gotten my monies worth. The table is a similar purchase ($12.. and I painted it the same color as our dining room wall) for the same reason. It is more difficult to find a 30 x 30 coffee table than one might think. (Sarah- I looked for a trunk and couldn't find one the right size!) I did make a trip to Home Goods. Found a clock and some napkins..both on clearance! The new napkins motivated me to finally sew together the table runner.. I had the cloth sitting on the table for several weeks now... And while I was crafting I decided to finish my chalk board and picture board and got them hung up as well! And one more purchase I'm excited about... We finally have plastic plates (and other stuff) for when the kidlins come visit! Another IKEA find for super cheap. I never thought I'd say this... but I'm finally an IKEA fan....
We had a great time on our trip up north but decided that in the end it probably would have been cheaper to buy a plane ticket to someplace warm and lay at a beach all week! Next year is looking bright! ;)

MyDecoratingStyle.....

...is 50% Modern Elegance, 50% Traditional Country according to Sproost.com... of course that would be assuming we actually spent money on decorating! I LOVED our house at Christmas time once we finally got all of our decorations up (read: the day after Christmas when we hit up the Target sales. Yes I put them up for a week..don't you judge me)... and once we took them down it looked bare again. Now Rusty is really bugging encouraging me to put the snowmen away... of course that will leave our house even more bare.
As of 11:30 am today my "spring break" officially started. Last year at this time, we were packing our bags for Hawaii... this year, we are getting ready to head up to MN to visit friends/family....brr.... (But not bad considering our spring break fund$ is going towards house projects)
Anyhow.... my post was not planned to complain about spring break.... or lack of.... but to point out that we are I am spending some of my MN time to do some shopping.... hopefully for the house!
On my wish list: area rug, coffee table, wall clock, bench, book case, wall art, pillows (yes really), etc. etc.
This is what we are working with...

Any inspiration for me???

And because instead of sulking about going somewhere cold for spring break.. I'm going to praise God for the memories of a warm spring break... here is a memory:

More Hickstionary

I used to have all these pretty little tabs across the top of my blog about past topics.... then I realized that was way too much work and TAGS are much easier. So here's some past topics from the Hickstionary. You can search through tabs and use that handy little search box up top to find more! :)

FAITH

FAMILY

FOOD

FIRESIDE

FUN

FOREVER

ODDS/ENDS