Reclaiming My House - Project #1 - The Master Bathroom

I started Project #1 of my 'Reclaiming My House' project yesterday (see post below) and finished up this morning.

I started small with our master bathroom.  Well, kind of small ha ha.  Our master bathroom is the only room in our house that hasn't been updated.  So....original 70s vanity, linoleum, etc.  We have plans to eventually redo it (maybe) but it's pretty low on our list.  No one uses it except Josh and I and it's functional.  And....it's a bathroom, you know?

I am going to be brave....here are the befores:

Products EVERYWHERE.  You would think that I would be a high maintenance girl that takes an hour to do my hair and face each day.  

Nope.  But products....everywhere.  I think what happens is that I see a new product I want to try, so I buy it and instead of waiting for my old product to be finished, I open the new product and use both of them.  And this is like times ten (hairspray, lotion, shampoo, etc.).  Hence the crazy amount of products that are on the counters.

First I went through every surface, drawer, cabinet, basket, and got rid of everything I didn't like, was too old, or I hadn't used in a year.  Then I gathered all 'like' products and chose the one that was the most empty and kept that out as the one to use until empty.  The rest went into a basket (on the shelving in the picture above).

Look at my lotions:

Eleven types of lotion.  All of them went into the basket except for this one:

If I smell like Wild Berry Tulips for the next three months, then so be it!  That's right people, I said so be it.

Oh, and those lotions above didn't include my self-tanning lotions.  (I am a white, white girl):

These were the winners:

Ready for the afters?

Much better!!!  It's kind of a hodgepodge of stuff and my baskets and containers don't match, but that's not the point.  The point is that it's functional and there is WAY LESS STUFF out on the counter.  All of my 'extra' products are hidden away in the baskets.  

It took maybe 2 hours last night and just 30 minutes this morning.  Well worth it!!  

Oh and the nicest part of this whole clean out was that I found two of my rings that I had been looking for in quite a while:

Next up?  The French cabinet.

Reclaiming My House

A while back (March to be exact) I was doing SO WELL with keeping up with housework, routines, keeping things organized, etc.  I was faithfully going to the gym each weekday morning before work.  And then after work I would do one load of laundry COMPLETELY (wash, dry, fold, put away) every single day so I was NEVER behind.  It was so nice!  Then I would cook dinner and pack our lunches for the next day (using my pre-washed, chopped and bagged fruits and veggies of course) and get my gym bag ready (which was easy because the laundry was ALWAYS caught up) and all was well in the world (well in my house at least).

 And then towards the end of March I dropped everything and I mean EVERYTHING and did nothing but study for 8 days for my CCA test.  And my whole system fell apart.  The house was a mess, laundry piled up, my once nice and neat organized drawers, cabinets, etc. became a thing of the past.  Fuzz started growing on the fruit in the fridge.  I stopped going to the gym.  I stopped planning.  I stopped keeping things neat.  And I never got back into my ‘groove’ again, and never really cleaned up the mess from the whirlwind that was those eight days.  I mean, yes, I’ve cleaned the house since then, but quickly and shoving things into closets and drawers and not spending any time at all bothering to keep things neat and clutter free.  And it has started to drive me completely insane.

 I would also like to add that we got Watson during this time frame and while we love him to pieces and are keeping him forever, he is MESSY.  He de-stuffs toys, chews his plastic toys so there are little plastic bits all over the floor, chews his blankets, makes a mess with his water bowl, and sheds like crazy.  

"Who me?"

That hasn’t exactly helped the chaos.

So my goal over the next few weeks is to reclaim my house and get it back in shape.  I’m going to start this weekend.  I know it won’t happen overnight unfortunately.  But I’m okay with it.  And if I’m brave enough, I will post ‘before’ pictures.  Just keeping it real people!  This isn’t so much about cleaning, but more about getting things organized and getting my routines back in place so that I don’t feel so overwhelmed the second I step into our home.

I'll post about my progress!

Sick Day

Last night at 2:30 in the morning I got sick.  I won't go into the details, but it was not pretty.  Or fun.  I fell back asleep around 4:00, and then woke up around 5:30 and got sick again.  At that point I texted my boss and told her I wouldn't be in.  I feel back asleep and stayed in bed until 11:30.

After I woke up I took the dogs out and came back in and tried to eat something.  I laid on the couch for a while.  My husband came home early because he too was not feeling well.  We watched two episodes of Sherlock.  I slept for another two hours.

I think my body is trying to tell me to slow the heck down.

We have been so busy lately and I think it just all caught up with me today.  Physically, I still don't feel quite right, but I'm hoping by tomorrow morning I will be better.  I think all of the sleep I got today will help.

We have a very busy couple of weeks coming up, pretty much starting this weekend.  I have to work Saturday morning.  Saturday at 4:00 we have our French meeting.  After meeting there is a gathering for a new family that joined our group for Nigeria.

My husband is also starting a new job this month and he will be in California for an entire week for training.  The following weekend we will be in Arizona for our convention.

So lots of activity in the next few weeks.  I'm going to try not to do too much, commit to too much and just SLOW down during all the activity if that is possible.  I don't want to get sick again.

The ONLY good thing about being sick though is watching TV.  My husband and I have been watching Sherlock on Netflix (the BBC version).  We are on Season 3.  It is so so good.  My only complaint is that each episode is like an hour and a half (which explains why each 'season' is only 3 or 4 episodes).

It is, as the British would say, brilliant.

And I'm finally getting around to Season 3 of Call the Midwife.  

It too, never disappoints.  I guess I'm on a BBC kick today.  Right now I'm holed up in the bedroom on my super comfy bed with my 7-up and Pepto chewable tablets nearby.  And I'll probably be sleeping within an hour or so.

Études Françaises

Studying for our French meetings (which is everything but the KM) takes quite a while, but it’s getting a little easier.

For our Wednesday night meeting (TMS), I read the Bible reading for the week in English, and then try to prepare at least 2 comments for the Bible Highlights in French.  That takes anywhere from 15 – 30 minutes, just preparing the comments (not including the reading).  I read both the RS and Insight book parts in English.

For the Draw Close book, I study the English and French at the same time.  I read my English one, but mark up my French copy (which is electronic on my Notability app).  I do it paragraph by paragraph.  Then I look up EVERY scripture that is listed in the paragraph in my French Bible.  I never know what scriptures the conductor is going to ask to have read, and if I look them all up, I can mark the ones I feel comfortable reading at a moment’s notice. 

I try to have a comment ready for each paragraph.  Some of them are just straight from the paragraph, and some of them are in my ‘own’ words (that I have written off to the side of course).

The Watchtower I do very similarly to the Draw Close book.  I try to have a comment for every paragraph (we have between 25 – 35 people at our meetings, and not a lot of commenters).  Again, some of them are straight from the paragraph, but I really am trying a lot harder to come up with them on my own.  We study out of the simplified Watchtower.

 So….here’s how I come up with my own comments and talks.

I use a combination of things.  Google Translate is very helpful, but it’s also VERY wrong a lot of the time.  Having taken 3 years of French in school I have enough of a background where I can kind of tell if something is not right.

My tips to ANYONE using Google translate are this:

Don’t do more than one sentence at a time, and even then try to break the sentence down into two or three parts.  And if you already know the translation, don’t plug it into Google Translate.  If you KNOW the phrase “we have to pray” (nous devons prier, or ‘we must pray’), then use it.  Don’t plug something into Google translate that you already know (this is something that my ‘mentor’ told me…she said translate what you can on your own, then go in and fill in the blanks because you will learn so much faster that way).

My next resource is an app called 'Word Reference'.  This has been a HUGE help in learning what phrases and figures of speech are just not used in the French language.  For example, a few weeks ago my husband had highlights and he wanted to say 'Pharaoh was irritated.'  Well, if you plug that into Google Translate, it comes out "pharaon était irritée'.  Now, I knew the first two words were correct, and it would seem that 'irritée' would be the correct word to use in this sentence, but I had NEVER heard that word used before.  So I looked it up in Word Reference, and 'irritated' in French (irritée) actually means 'feeling inflammation' (as in a skin rash or something).  Which would explain why I've never heard it.  Word Reference than gave some suggestions.  The word that the French use for irritated (as in annoyed or infuriated) is 'furieux'.  So we chose that one because my husband was not implying that Pharaoh had an inflamed skin rash (I suppose he could have, but that's not the reason he was irritated ha ha).

When I was helping my mother-in-law this past weekend with her French talk, we used a combination of Google Translate, Word Reference and a good old French Dictionary.  I told her to make her talk as simple as possible in English.  That helps greatly.  In Google Translate, if you type in something like ‘what we can see from this….’, it will use the word for physically seeing something with your eyes (not learning, which is what we want to convey).  So  because Google Translate takes everything literally, you have to take that into consideration when using it.  Instead of saying ‘what we can see from this…’, I had her simply use ‘What we learn...'  Keep it simple and your translation will come across so much clearer.  Plus, it will be much simpler for an audience that is learning French as well to understand.

Another thing that Google Translate does that drives me bonkers is when it comes to formal vs. informal words.  It makes everything formal.  Always.   And as witnesses, we are very informal with each other.  We are family!  The formal word for 'you' is 'vous'.  The informal for 'you' is 'tu'.  I'm sure everyone knows the phrase 'Comment-allez vous?'.  This is the way you would ask a complete stranger how they're doing.  So at the meetings, we NEVER use this phrase.  We say 'comment ça va' (how's it going?).  Google Translate apparently assumes you know no one, so everything is formal.  ‘Do you want to read’ comes across as ‘voulez-vous lire’.  The ‘vous’ in this sentence being formal for ‘you’.  The informal (and more common) way to say it is ‘veux-tu lire’.  Tu is the ‘informal’ you.  This is a new concept to English speakers, because we don’t have formal and informal words.  And the ‘voulez’ and ‘veux’ are different conjugations of the same verb (‘vouloir’, which means ‘to want’).  Google Translate will not let you change it to ‘informal’, so this is one of those things that you just have to know.  Or you have to have this:

Ha ha.  This book is awesome.  It lists all of the conjugations for just about every verb out there.

 I love it.  Especially for irregular verbs, such as vouloir.  If the verb ends in ‘er’, than the conjugations are pretty much the same.  But the irregular verbs like ‘être’ (to be), or ‘vouloir’ (to want) are the ones that will get you all confused.  Especially être.  Geez.  Être is just a mess.  Ironically, that was the first verb I learned in the 7^th grade and it was drilled into my head every day for the entire school year.  Which is good, because I remember every conjugation of that word to this day (Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils ont = I am, you are, he is, she is, we are, you are).  And it's one of the most commonly used verbs.

 Anyways.  I'm getting off track.

The things that I am trying to learn now is when to use certain words that are the same.  Like the word for ‘when’.  It’s either ‘quand’ or ‘lorsque’.  ?  And I’ve heard them used both equally.  I’m trying to make a note of these types of things as they pop into my head to research later or ask Nicole (my most favorite French lady in the world….well, actually she’s Canadian, but she speaks French and I love her to pieces). 

So....there you have it.  A small glimpse into my French studies and why it takes me so long.  Confused yet?  Me too!  Prayer helps ha ha.

Random

*Reason #12,347 why I love Target.  See this:

It's a gift card that we received from my brother and sister-in-law for our anniversary AND.....it doubles as a bookmark!!!

Is that adorable or what???  I love Target.  We used the gift card to buy a few boxes of these:

I'm hoping hubby can hang them up out on our back patio tomorrow.  I love them!

*Speaking of hubby, he conducted the Draw Close book in FRENCH a couple weeks ago!

He did great.

*We got this awesome card from my niece:

It makes me smile each time I look at it.  ps...have you seen Frozen?  If you haven't, please watch it.  It's so cute and funny.

*See this smiling guy?  He is 100% kennel free.  We now trust him on his own in the house while we are at work.  It's still a little scary, but he's done so well so far.  He is just such a sweet dog.  He sleeps in our room every night.  He starts off on the bed with us for maybe 30 minutes or so, then hops down and gets on his bed (which is fantastic for us!).  He's definitely a keeper.  As long as we keep him supplied in chew toys, he seems to be fine unattended.

*I have officially been at my job for four years now.  Here's my desk (it looks clean, but the left side, which is not pictured, is a little messy):

And here is the view from my building:

Not too shabby!  It's about 7 minutes from home.  I love it!

Since I passed my CCA test, I've been using this almost daily:

My boss is having me write all of our coding related appeals.  I'm a geek...I love it.

*I helped my mother-in-law with her first French talk today.  She's giving it on Wednesday.  I am so excited and nervous for her!  She'll do great though.  She's a natural.  

*Why can't we have every Monday off?

*We watched 'The Monuments Men' last night.  It started off slow, but it got better.  It helps that both George Clooney AND Matt Damon are in it.  And Bill Murray.  And Hugh Bonneville (Lord Grantham from Downton!).  It's a great cast.

*My husband makes GREAT White Russians.  He made me one tonight.  Before tonight, the last time I had one was when my sister-in-law was here back in January.  They are tasty!

*We were short on brothers for our French meeting on Saturday, so guess who got to run the sound booth?  Yours truly.  Ha ha.  It was kinda fun though!  Although VERY hard to comment while running the sound booth.  Oh well. 

*That's all for now!

Book vs. Movie

I really wish I had more time to read.  My ‘to be read’ stack of books is not getting any smaller, and every now and then I will still add to it!  I used to read during my 30-minute lunch break, but since we moved to our new building, I use my 30 minutes to run home for lunch to let the dogs out.  So reading during lunch is over for me.  

I try to avoid reading in bed before sleep, because lately I’ve found that it keeps me awake instead of helping me fall asleep.  So I play Candy Crush or some other mindless game on my ipad instead.

So that leaves reading for random times during the afternoon after I get home from work.  I get home around 3:45 each day.  Mondays are out, because I start cleaning when I get home in preparation for Tuesday (the day that my mother-in-law comes over for dinner each week).  Hubby comes home around 5:30, and that’s about when I’m starting dinner.  By the time dinner and kitchen cleanup is done, it’s 6:30 or so.  Then we take the dogs outside to play for at least 45 minutes.  It’s now 7:15.  From 7:15 – 8:30 is generally ‘free’ time.  But anything that needs done for the day (paying bills, writing notes, laundry to be folded, put away, etc.) needs to be done during this time as well.  At 8:30 we attempt to start getting ready for bed.  Hear me out….we have 3 medications to give one cat, a shot to give to another cat, a baby-wipe bath to give to one dog who has bad allergies (the wipes help get all of the dust and pollen off of her from being outside and low to the ground), two lunches to make for the next day, gym bags to pack, dogs to take out for one last pee, etc.  And then we still have to do OUR bedtime routine (brushing teeth, etc.).  So we get to bed around 9:30 or so.  That’s just Monday.  Tuesdays are completely out because that’s when momma-in-law comes over.  Wednesdays are out because that’s a meeting night.  Thursdays are probably my best shot at reading a little each week.  Fridays are usually out because that’s when I get groceries and prepare for Saturday and Sunday (French studying takes FOREVER....like hours.  I'm not exaggerating). 

So now that you’ve heard my little pity party on why I don’t have the time I wish I had to read, I’ll get on with my story here, ha ha.

I recently watched two movies that I just happened to have read the books they were based on (it took me a few months though).  Here are the reviews:

 The Book Thief

I bought this book a LONG time ago (I think I bought it in Nebraska like 3 years ago when I was with my mom at Barnes & Noble)  I started reading it and honestly I lost interest.  It was very long.  But the story was good.  But sad.  But LONG.  When the movie came out though, it looked really good and it inspired me to pick up the book again and finish it.  Except I had to start over completely because I had forgotten everything that I had already read, ha ha.  But I got through the book this time.  And then watched the movie.

The verdict?  The movie was SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE BOOK!!  That’s a rare thing to say, but it’s true.  I thought the book was just too detailed and too long.  But the movie?  Perfect.  The acting, the story, everything.  In case you haven’t seen it, it’s about a German girl (Leisel) living in Nazi Germany.  Her family decides to hide a Jew in their basement in the height of World War 2.  Leisel befriends the Jew and he teaches her to read and write.  And once she learns how to read, well….she starts stealing books.  She gets them from various places, the most interesting is when she saves one from a book burning.  Risky!  She is such a lovable character and while it is a very sad story, it’s amazing how she is able to overcome everything in her hard life.  I will definitely watch it again.

Next up? 

Labor Day

I heard about this book before I heard about the movie.  It’s about a single depressed mom, her pre-teen son, and the escaped convict that comes into their lives over a long Labor Day weekend.  The book was good, the movie was just as good as the book.  The movie stars Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet, and I love both of them, so I might be a little biased.  It’s a nice unconventional love story.  I will watch this one again too.

Apparently I am on a ‘book to movie’ reading kick, because I am now reading ‘Divergent’ (the movie has already been released).  I’m also reading The Storyteller, The Goldfinch, The White Queen and one other one I think.  I’ve never been a ‘read one book at a time’ gal.  Maybe that's why it takes me months to finish one book!  Ha ha.

Random

*Busyness ensues.  Sigh.  Sometimes I think how nice it would be to not be so swamped all the time, but then other times I think I wouldn't want it any other way.

*I have a French talk on Wednesday.  I REALLY struggled with this one, to the point of tears.  Not the French part....that was easy.  It was doing it in English first that was the hard part.  The Ten Commandments - ceremonial vs. moral law, etc.  A topic that is generally not going to come up in everyday conversation.  But my husband helped me with it and I got it done.  I was totally over thinking it and making it more complicated than it was.

*I just watched the movie 'Labor Day' with Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet.  It was just as good as the book.  I am a huge Josh Brolin fan though, so I may not be the best critic of this movie.  I loved it.  And now I want to bake a pie.  (which will make sense if you've read the book or seen the movie).

*I bought the above mentioned DVD at Target today for $4 due to my mad couponing skills!!!  Much cheaper than going to see it on the big screen, even at the cheap-o theater!

*Today I washed Watson's bedding and wiped down his kennel and gave him a new blanket to chew on.  He's a blanket chewer.  He usually falls asleep with his blankie in his mouth.

*I said a prayer for all of my Nebraska friends and family who are dealing with tornadoes tonight.  As much as I love thunderstorms, tornadoes are scary.

*I am addicted to Crystal Light packets that you mix with water.  My favorite is the Peach Iced Tea.  I have a box at work and a box at home.

*Speaking of work, I had my yearly review.  It went very well.  I MIGHT get a promotion, but it's kind of out of my boss's hands.  Because she's new, she didn't do the budget last year for this year (it was done by her boss's boss, who doesn't really know anything about our department).  So it may or may not happen.  Either way, I'll still get a raise.

*We've been watching a lot of hockey around here lately.  My husband even pronounced that he is starting to like hockey more than baseball, or at least just as much.  He is a huge Blackhawks fan.  Football is still his all time favorite, but now I think hockey has replaced baseball as his #2 favorite!  (He doesn't like basketball that much)

*We watched Round 1 of the NFL draft  I got all weepy when I saw the huge football players crying and hugging their families.  We didn't watch past round 1 though, because what a snoozefest!!  

*I've been watching 'Bates Motel' on Netflix.  It is a contemporary prequel to "Psycho".  It is creepy but oh so good.  Both Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore are excellent.  And creepy.  And crazy.  And yes, Freddie Highmore is the kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the one with Johnny Depp).  He grew up.  And became creepy Norman Bates as a teenager.  

*I'm happy that it's watermelon season.

*Watson and Hannah are getting along better and playing even.  And just a couple days ago, I saw Hannah standing underneath him.  I almost started crying because she used to stand underneath Max all the time.  This is progress!  So cute.

*I think that's it.  I'm tired and not at all ready for this week.  But we had a good weekend and got a lot done at least!