A Valentine for You!

Happy Valentine's Day to all my family and friends!


I appreciate all of you who read my blog and leave such great comments. I often find myself composing a post based on what I think you all will enjoy reading. I sure come up with some interesting ideas when I do that. Lucky for you, I don't share all of them!

So I hope all of you have or had a great Valentine's Day. Let's get together for lunch some time!

I had such a great response from my before and after pictures yesterday that I thought I'd go for overkill. You may be rolling your eyes, but it got me to clean the downstairs...just to be able to take pictures!

The downstairs is really only 2 rooms (and food storage which I didn't clean or take pictures of...you're welcome): the TV room and toy room.

TV room BEFORE














TV room AFTER

I started on this room first, and had it mostly put away, when I moved into the toy room. When I turned around, this room was halfway to messy again! And it was only Rebekah and Leah "helping" me. Joseph was there...in full voice!


Toy Room BEFORE














Toy Room AFTER

I vacuumed this room first. I'd had the door shut and noticed a yucky smell when I went in. (It likely has something to do with the previous owner's dog.) So I went upstairs for some carpet powder. Nathan came down as I started vacuuming and asked why it smelled so good in there. I told him that I sprinkled something and he went to get Leah. When they came back, they both dropped to the floor and started inhaling! So if you find out later that they have respiratory problems, it's probably from concentrated carpet deodorizer!

And, of course, since I started in this room it was ready for play and these two monkeys got in there before I could take my after picture. With so much room to play, how could they not spread out? I'm still not sure why Leah has to be IN the bin.

I also chased down cobwebs with the attachment and vacuumed the stairs. I guess since we're in the country, we'll be raising spiders. There are cobwebs everywhere! Maybe I should just leave everything until October. By then we can claim to be a haunted house and charge admission. We do need a new furnace for next winter.

While I was cleaning, Nathan came home from school...with his Valentine's Day bounty. By the time I got upstairs, he and the girls were sitting in a pile of candy wrappers and Valentines. Nathan ate a whole (full-sized) Hershey's Chocolate bar...you know, the one you break into sections! He was disappointed when I told him to hold off on the rest of the candy. The girls have been disappointed, too. It was repeated when Daniel came home, except for it was only Daniel getting a sugar high. Nathan shared his Valentines with the girls and they have been carrying around their pretty treasures all afternoon.

In between free moments to clean (don't even think that I got that done in the first try), I took care of immediate needs...mostly Joseph's...and made Valentine cookies. That first picture up there is a shot of the cookies. I found a very yummy sugar cookie recipe. It has been a bad day for counting calories! At first, I thought I'd just have 2. Then it was 4 and 6. Before I knew it, I had given up counting. I decided to go ahead and have a Valentine treat for myself. I figured if I just ate as many as I wanted, I'd eventually make myself sick and be able to avoid them for a few days. It nearly worked. I need a couple more. I was just performing a quality control check and disposing of the imperfect ones. And I was REALLY picky!

Here's a shot of Nathan in his new hat last night. He made it all by himself. He really loves his K'Nex. I really hate cleaning them up!

Happy Valentines' Day again! I'll post some of the Valentines I gave to Chad over the past two weeks in a day or so.