Monday, April 28, 2014

Convection

A homeschooling mom friend from Misawa posted this awesome link on Facebook today.

And we just had to try this because, "we're studying rockets in science, Mom,"  and "I just read about convection in my science book."

Later, they went out and burned our old Palm Sunday palms and a couple of worn out scapulars and buried the ashes in the garden.

Boys. Fire. All in the name of Science (and religion, apparently). :-)




Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Paint ideas: a work in progress

Because I need to gather this info somewhere and I don't have time to figure out Instagram

Dining room:
  Benjamin Moore Palladian Blue above the chair rail, Dove White below  = LOVE!!

Before:

After:

Living room:
wall color: Benjamin Moore Pittsfield Buff; not sure I got it quite right, but we like it a lot better than the mushroom greige that was here

bookshelves and window seat: hoping to do this over the summer. They will be painted Dove White to match the trim and fireplace mantel that the kids and I repainted last summer.

Idea #1


Front hall, back hall, stairway:
I bought a gallon of Ben Moore Windham Cream last summer and then lost my nerve. Would it flow between the living and dining rooms? the dining room and kitchen? or just cut things off? Still not sure. Halls are still mushroom greige: HELP!

Windham Cream design photo from Houzz

Kitchen: Staying grey-green as it is for now

Girls' room: green and white; wonder what color it is--need to investigate abandoned paint cans in the basement

Boys' room:
Benjamin Moore      Blue  and maps. They nixed the baseball theme after Matthew freaked out about the idea of a giant baseball flying toward him from the wall mural. Sad for me, but okay. It's their room, after all.

Our room:
I'm unsure of what to do here: green? blue? grey? Definitely need new bedside lamps.

School room:
I'd like to use the yellow on the accent wall in this post in our school room.
     Done! With Dove White trim. And I love it. :-)

Before:
After:


Thursday, April 17, 2014

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Living an idea, or, Why in the world our family lives in an urban area by choice

It has been almost a year since I posted asking for your prayers for us as we searched for a house to buy. We did find a suitable house. Not our dream house, but a sturdy house with enough living space and bedrooms not only to accommodate all of us, a lovely young lady boarder, and occasional guests, but also to allow us to "call the neighbors in" as we love to do.

The house is close enough to walk to those neighbors' homes,  to Dan and Taryn's house, to church, to the park, to restaurants, a small organic market, a farmer's market, and both the metro and the train station where John begins and ends his daily commute. My sprout of an idea of walking or biking where we need to go is starting to blossom here.

The house was built in 1950. For the past five years, it was a rental property, and it shows. It needs a lot of work, both cosmetic and structural, but by the grace of God, the structure does seem mostly sound. We are watching a few cracks in the foundation of the sunroom addition. The roof will need to be replaced, possibly including many of the actual boards under the shingles, in the next 3-5 years. And let's not talk about the retaining wall that keeps us from sliding off the hill. I have a dream for it, but it's going to take some time.

On the bright side, the moldy paneling, water-stained carpet, and root-bound floor tiles in the basement have been removed, mostly through the efforts of John and the local Catholic men's group, the Barnraisers. With the help of Katie's teenaged friends, new paint has freshened up the school room, dining room, and Patrick's room. More painting is yet to come. The "greige" paint (as the children call it) in the front hall and master bedroom has got to go! I'm a little stuck in choosing replacement colors, but hope to get past that by the time we get out of school and have time to paint. John and I are learning more every day about home maintenance. We are dreaming of new bookshelves for the living room. And we have learned that the simple act of hanging our own pictures on the walls resulted in making everyone feel more at home, more permanent, than any other thing.

With prayer, the welcoming spirits of our new neighbors, and God's grace, we are settling into this community.

It is the community, after all, that drew us here. Dan and Taryn  discovered it and moved here first, in late winter two years ago. When they started telling us about it, we were intrigued. Here was a chance to live near family in a walkable community salted with Catholic neighbors who moved here with the intention of living in this place at this time: to do something beautiful for God and neighbor in what has been a beleaguered neighborhood inside the DC beltway.

Will Seath writes here about how it came to be.

And that is why we have chosen this busy, urban neighborhood, so different from our dreams of rural tranquility, in which to make our home.