House Update: A New Bed!

After 23 years, we got a new bed. It's not that we had been sleeping on the same mattress for that long. We had a house fire and replaced our mattress in 2005. So, technically, we're still a little early for "recommended mattress replacement."  But, we did it anyway!

Ron and I stayed at a couple of places where we were able to sleep on king-sized beds, and really liked them.  Add to it that we really like memory foam pillows. So what does that combination give you? A Memory Foam King Sized Mattress from Simmons!

This way, when I come in late to bed, the bed won't move at all. You've seen the commercials where the couple is jumping on the bed and the wine glass doesn't spill? That's what we have now. 

It's very comfy!

Now I have to figure out what to do with the wall, since the headboard is gone. Replace it? Put up artwork? Decisions! Decisions!

So what to do with the old bed? It's going to go to the guest bedroom.  We split the bedroom set up.  I still kept my dresser in my room along with both bedside tables, but this other dresser (to the right of the bed) and the headboard will move with the bed.  The room is too small to put the footboard on, so it will stay in storage.

Now when Katie comes home for Spring Break, or when she's back for a few months in the summer, she'll have this nice room off the bathroom.  And when we have company, they won't be relegated to a sleeping bag on the couch!

And with all the sheets and comforters we have in this house, there's nothing king sized.  

Off to Bed Bath and Beyond!

Evolution... of a Room

My little front room.  It's had several incarnations and now, it's embarking on a new one!
When we first moved here, it was clear that the little front room was meant to be a dining room. But with our dining room set, that's a tight fit. Still, we managed to cram the whole set in there.  The room has a lovely window looking out on the front yard, even though our neglected bushes partly obscure the view.  We're normally not big furniture people.  But we lived a few years in Greensboro, North Carolina. I think only 1-2 friends might know their North Carolina geography well enough to know that Greensboro and High Point are next door neighbors. And maaaaybe you know that High Point is the Furniture Mecca.  People come from far and wide to buy their furniture straight out of Thomasville and Virginia House and   Heartland. Since we lived there, we figured we better get something.  So we bought a beautiful solid oak dining room set. And the big oak table with 6 chairs and a matching hutch - which was perfect for our huge 1920's home in North Carolina. But when you put people in there too, it's way too much for our little Pflugerville dining room.

So we moved the dining room set to the other room and decided to make it a piano/music room.  When we lived in Wichita Falls, it was common to have Michael and Ron playing guitar while Katie and I sang along.  Michael had left for college, but we still set up the guitars and moved the piano into the little front room. We found a small but comfy inexpensive sofa (at Garden Ridge, no less!) and put it in there too.  It was a nice place for me to go have a cup of tea while kids played Mario Kart on the big screen upstairs and Ron watched hockey on the T.V. downstairs. It's all just a little too much for me. But I didn't want to retreat to my room, absolutely away from everyone, so the little front room sufficed.

Katie used that room a lot to practice piano over the years and work on different vocal pieces. I loved listening to her. Having that room separate enabled her to really get into it without a lot of distractions. But now she's off in New York for a while and the piano was gathering dust. I decided that if she came back and wanted a piano, she should get a good one. She told me she was really thinking about a little keyboard to take up to her dorm in NYC. They have headphones now, and she could play away without bothering anyone.  Michael was gone and guitars were just sitting there untuned. Clearly, the little room no longer needed to be a Music Room.

As I'm writing about my little front room, I'm thinking about how much I have in common with it. I start out my life in one direction, only to make sweeping changes and head another way.  When life changed, I adapted. And that's what my little room is doing too.

I've been searching for what to do now that I'm transitioning out of a full-time mother role.  And I haven't really figured it out yet. But I will. Life works like that.

I pondered and pondered about what my little front room could be. This seemed a little easier to work on than working on My Life.  I finally decided that I like it as a little sitting room. I'll fill it with art that I like. Maybe art about being a mother.  Maybe.  A stereo with soft music could help drown out most of the television noise. That would be nice.  But it still needed something.  And what do I do if I can't think of what needs to happen to a room - marathon HGTV!  HGTV never fails me!

Let me back up to say I had always wanted a fireplace in our house. I'm irritated with jealousy when I get out of my car and I smell my neighbors' fireplaces. It wouldn't have been that much for the original owner to put one in - but alas, he did not. That's where HGTV comes in. They started showing different fireplaces people were using outdoors. Gas and gel were the fuel choices for the newer cooler models. Then I saw them install a gel fireplace IN someone's house! I had to have it!

I went online and looked up gel fueled fireplaces. Not only did they have the sleek models I was seeing on TV, but they also had more traditional looking fireplaces. With no breaking down walls and creating chimneys, I could simply have a crackling REAL fire after all. So the week of Thanksgiving, Ron helped me choose and order a gel fueled fireplace.  And a week later it was here.

In just a couple of hours Josh and Ron had it assembled. The gel fuel had arrive a few days before so we were ready. It looks so real. The "logs" are made of cement but they look real. And it actually warms up my little room. I took this really plain picture of it, right away. Initially the flames burned high about the logs. But just as with a real fireplace, the fire starts to die down a little - and so did this!
Still, you can see what it looks like.
My next pictures will be with all the Christmas decorations on or hanging off of it!

I love my new fireplace and what my little room has turned into now! There's room for the Christmas tree in there too. My little room is finally cozy and well on the way to being my perfect little spot in the house - just the place for me to think about what I want to do with my life.

New Doors!

If you were reading before, you'd know that our sliding glass door broke on Thanksgiving Day. Glad to see our family tradition of some kind of house-fiasco-always-occurring-on-a-holiday-when-people-are-coming-over, is still intact.


 With three dogs, that back door is vital. It's not just something we were going to postpone until after Christmas.   The roller had somehow broken off and fallen back up into the door. This made it nearly impossible to move. So it was stuck in the open position, or in the closed position... for hours.


So my choice was keep the dogs cooped up in the house all day or let an inordinate number of flies into the house.


Everyone was armed with a flyswatter.


  Luckily, the Loews subcontractor could get to us pretty quickly. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Ron set it up that we'd have a new door by Wednesday.



Sorry about all the glare from the sun. I was using my cell phone because I didn't want to creep out the workman. "Oh don't mind me, I'm just taking pictures of you for my blog!"Ha!

And here's the finished look!  
Who wants tocome over for coffee on my patio??

Our Piano

Katie always wanted to play the piano. She and Alyssa both have taken lessons. Initially, we had only an electric keyboard. That's not good enough when you're really starting to play songs....at least if you're trying to learn how pedals work.  So when we moved to Wichita Falls, and we had the space, and we thought we were done with moving around, we decided to start looking for a piano.

Wow! There's quite a price range for pianos! I had no idea. I had great memories of my cousin's piano. She was playing Christmas carols and everyone was gathered around, singing along. And then another friend with a huge room, had a baby grand piano. It was gorgeous. More like a furniture piece, than something to play. Although you could allow your thoughts to drift over to Dean Martin and his cocktail party guests gathering around for a little song. Not that that was happening in my house - or anyone else I know - but it gave me a warm Bing Crosby feeling.

So the quest for Our Piano continued.

Alyssa's interest in piano waned, but Katie's continued. She really enjoyed the teaching style of Mrs. Mahurin, who lived in Charlie, just a few miles from our house.  Mrs. Mahurin had been in that community for a long time and she knew a lot of people. She understood bargain shopping - even for pianos; and she knew just the one at a nearby church.  They had upgraded to a much nicer more modern piano/organ and this one was relegated to a dusty basement. The church told her they'd part with it for $100.

She called. We confirmed. That was that. Added bonus: we were just 3-4 weeks away from Christmas!

The church agreed to hang onto it for us. The plan was to pick it up on Christmas Eve. I don't really remember how this all played out. I must have taken the kids off somewhere and Ron orchestrated the ...not sure what to call when one tries to sneak a piano into a house!  But he threw a few blankets over it, adding some packing as if to disguise the shape.

When we returned, the girls were whisked past the wrapped "disguised" piano.  All was well.

One of our Christmas Morning traditions is that the kids can't go into the room with the Christmas tree until I'm ready for them. This means, turning on the tree lights, starting the Christmas music, making some coffee, adjusting the video or the camera - whichever we're using to record their reactions. I know, writing all that makes me sound a little...controlling? obsessed? nuts? Whatever. Don't judge.

So while they're waiting to emerge, Pete the Cat walks along the piano keys. I shoo him off there, but not before Alyssa shouts from the other room, "I knew it was a piano!!"

This piano. What it lacked in formality and even good tuning, it made up for in charm. One key really struggled to hold its note. The wood on it didn't match. Swaths of paint graced the front and the sides, probably from a tight fitting doorway during one of this piano's many moves. We were always going to sand those off and it could have looked wonderful, but we just didn't take the time to do that.

Plus, as a friend of mine in California told me, "Flat surfaces do not stay vacant for long in your house!" The piano quickly became the base for family pictures and knick knacks, a lovely desk lamp that cast a yellow glow into the room, a candle or two, and the obligatory metronome. Who am I kidding? Looking at it now, there are also matted photos from Ari that still need to be framed, some ear muffs, headphones, a wall hanging that fell and hadn't been rehung, some mail that never made it to the flat surface where it belonged.  Yeah, that piano could hold a lot of stuff.  Even the small piano bench would bulge over the years with Alfred's Basic Piano, or All-in-One music books. Plus, all the loose music that Katie would stuff in there from vocal lessons, musicals, or from her piano teacher.

But this is yet another blog post about time marching on.

Katie's moved to NYC, and the piano sits and gathers dust.  All the stuff still sits on it, but now it gathers dust too. Years before, Our Piano had been moved to a little front room.  It was crowded, but cozy.  Katie could sing really well, but she was often quite loud. A great thing for the stage, a little much for the living room. Unfortunately, she was often drawn to the piano when everyone was sitting around trying to watch television. It's hard to focus on CSI when Katie is belting out songs from Phantom of the Opera!  In retrospect, moving it to the other room, meant that she didn't play it as much.  I guess it was a line of sight kind of thing. And now, as I sit in this very quiet house, I miss the cacophony of kids - video games, television, laughter (and yelling)... and that piano.

But keeping the piano won't bring all that back. And, just as I've had to do with lots of the kids' "things" that I was hanging on to... I needed to find a way to let the piano go too. I called it cozy in that tiny front room, but that's really a stretch. It's overstuffed. (Have you seen The Hoarders show? The kids kept making me watch it over the summer. They reassured me that I was not there yet, but they could see if coming if I didn't get a hold of myself!)

Anyway...back to Our Piano. We considered selling it. But looking at that old piano from an objective buyer's standpoint, it wouldn't make us much money. They wouldn't see all the stories that are associated with it.  I sent an email out to my friends to see if anyone would want Our Piano. I was so happy to hear that my friend Cydney did! SHE would understand the stories that come with the piano. She would appreciate the history. She described the shelves that she'd like to build around our little piano to showcase it (and all of her other great art work). Perfect. She'd have to convince her husband that they really need a piano, especially since no one plays piano there, but I was confident she could do that.

After a little coordinating, we scheduled the movers to come on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

So as I wait for the movers to come pick up the piano, I have my moment in my crowded little front room with Our Piano.  I think about listening to Katie's voice through the years.  It got stronger as her range grew; I knew that by listening to her work on music at that piano.  I think about when Katie would play it if I was sick. Her voice and the music would waft up the stairs.  And I could just lay there and listen to her and her piano.  It was beautiful. That was my favorite.

I think of  my friend/her piano teacher, Marilyn Mahurin. She was such a wonderful life-line for me when we were surrounded by a community of people that really didn't like us much. Here she was, the minister's wife, sharing her books and ideas, commiserating when people were mean or judgmental.  We were connected with her for five years through piano. We watched her kids grow; we followed her when she moved into town. That piano she found for us reminded me that good people exist everywhere -  even when the loudest want to push them out of the picture.  You just have to get calm, look around, and find the Marilyn Mahurins. They're out there.


I'm happy Our Piano is going to go live in someone-I-know's house.  And I'm happy that we have such wonderful memories.  So the movers arrived and tilted it onto the dolly. I walked with them as they rolled it up the ramp and into the truck. They looked at me kind of funny when I wanted to take one last picture of Our Piano moving away.  Kind of like how I took pictures of Katie and Michael at the airport when they left.

They say it's our resistance to Change that makes it hard. So even though some little tears are squeaking out as I'm telling you this weird story about Our Piano, I'm trying not to resist all the Changes that are happening around me.  Really. I'm trying.

Garden Greenhouse

We've done a lot of work in our yard this year. With the onset of the Texas Drought, we had to make some serious changes. Add our three dogs to the mix and the grass in the backyard had to go. So we enlarged the patio square footage and put down pea gravel.   This meant that most of the gardening had to be done in pots. Another reason for this decision was the propensity of Gracie, the Siberian Husky to dig. I was tired of going out to find that she had dug up a bush and was gnawing on it in the corner of the yard. Anyway, we have a solution for the winter!

I got my Greenhouse! 

It's 8' x 8' - not 12'x12' like I wrote in a previous blog. But it's plenty roomy! I have two shelves on the sides and a small folding table in the middle toward the back. I'm able to slide 2 rubber maids full of potting soil under the table.

It's just off the deck, so the electricity is handy. I'll be able to put grow lights out there to warm it up when temperatures really start to drop (Not by most other states' cold temperature standards, but Texas standards. We freak out if the double digits go to the 30's!)

So last night, the cold front came in. I don't even know what the temperature was, but the wind was blowing so hard, it was making it so much colder. I brought all the plants into my new greenhouse! There was PLENTY of room! Shelter from that wind! This is going to be soo much better than dragging them into the bathtub and setting up a grow light in there. Or worse, letting the plants stay out just a little longer than they should, and then pulling in their nearly lifeless stalks.  Only to worry about watering them in the house and overflowing to the floor, or letting them just pile up near the doorway in a cluster of dying leaves.


Not this year!

I even pulled up my now flowering green pepper plants and repotted them. Hopefully they'll produce a little with this protection.

And my little cacti are going to be so happy in there!

This morning, when I went out to check on them...I unzipped the door and it was nice and warm in there; the sun was shining through the plastic walls.

Yep, this will make a nice winter home for my plants.