Showing posts with label Keepin' it REAL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keepin' it REAL. Show all posts

Friday, December 1, 2023

Today is a good day to be kind...

 Today is a good day to be kind.

    Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.  Much of what happens to us actually has nothing to do with us. What do I mean?  How someone chooses to treat you says everything about their character and nothing about yours. Their behavior isn't personal.  So. That gives us permission to stop taking things personally.  It is an incredibly freeing perspective shift.

    Does that mean we have no responsibility here? No. It goes both ways. How YOU treat others says everything about YOUR character.  Choose to continue acting purposefully in a way that is God honoring and is in line with your character.  What is that called??? INTEGRITY. 

New today in the Vintage Dutch Girl Etsy Shop is this new graphic design to remind ourselves and others to act in accordance with our character:

 
BE KIND
 
BE LIFE

BE TRUE

BE LOVE



 

 

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Travel Trailer Makeover, Part 1: Shower Curtain...

First of all, I apologize for the travel trailer sassification posting delay. See, we were busy actually USING our new trailer (Lumi) for the first time. You know, the main point of having a trailer. Not for shredding it to pieces and revamping it; for CAMPING. Err....glamping :)

OK, here goes.

It aaaaaalllll started with a shower curtain.

I'm in the middle of Fred Meyer with a list a MILE long of stuff I'm looking for to outfit our new travel trailer. Cooking hardware, organizational stuff, utensils, storage bins, etc....

The kiddos are being less than helpful.  I have them side by side in that weird car cart at Freddy's that had the kiddos high and up front "steering" the cart.

After breaking up eleventry hundred fights, reminding them eleventry hundred times to stop shrieking in the store, picking up my clipboard eleventry hundred times after they knocked it to the floor (Yes, I shop with a clipboard. Yes, I am a nerd. Hey, at least its not a fanny pack. ) I decided to go for it and let them stay in the Fred Meyer kid play area.

I'm one of those nervous types of Mama.  Kinda wary regarding these kinds of child care centers.  However, after having heard positive things about it from other Mama's that I trust, I decided to check it out.  Yup, loved the system and the safety features and went for it.  Bubbalu was pounding on the locked entrance door chanting, "let me in, let me in!"  A pretty good sign.

Was a SMART Mama and took the kiddos to the potty first.

Yup.

So, I was now blissfully child-free and finally able to tackle my list.

Fast forward 10 minutes. I'm pushing my (now empty of children) ginormous child car cart through the store, knocking items off my list.  I find this gorgeous light aqua blue modern print shower curtain...and Ka-ChoW! Light bulb moment.

I say to myself, oh yes, I am GOING to find a way to switch out the current blah trailer shower curtain to this sassy one.

I'm holding the shower curtain in my hand when I hear this crackly overhead page,

"AMANDA ------- --------, WOULD YOU PLEASE RETURN TO THE CHILD CARE CENTER"

Oh. CRAP.

At this point I'm guessing Bubbalu has jumped off a table or something and broke his arm. And please remember: It's been approximately ELEVEN minutes since I checked them in the child care center.

For real.

I get there and Lil Chick is bawling!  Turns out she has had an accident.  A HUGE accident. A poo in the pants accident.

Oh. CRAP.

Literally.

Thankfully, I had thrown the sassy shower curtain into my cart. And by golly, I am NOT leaving the store without my sassy shower curtain. And all the other random stuff in my now full cart.

Picture this:  A now flustered Mama pushing a full-of-products-yet-still-childless child car cart around to the checkout line with one hand while the other hand is holding Lil Chick's hand. (There is NO way I'm going to carry her. Poo squishing down the side of my shirt and pants?! No thanks. Been there done that.)

Another SMART Mama move: I choose the Family Friendly checkout lane.

Because only a compassionate fellow parent can even possibly begin to understand my plight when my child is SCREAMING at the top of her little yet mighty lungs:


"I HAVE POOP! IN! MY! UNDERWEAR!"

Broken record? Yes. Screamed this delightful little phrase from the time I first arrived at the child care center to pick her up, through the entire checking out process, aaaaalll the way to Lola (our Tahoe) in the back of the lot, and about halfway home....at which point Mama remembers that she has a random Dora DVD in the car and by golly, that "we use the car TV only for LONG car trips" rule is going to be broken.

Stopped crying about three notes into the Dora theme song.

ANYWHO. Yes, a poo accident in a store.  Just another lovely entry in my parenting diary.

Back to the main point. I found a sassy shower curtain to replace the blah one that came with the trailer.  I first seam ripped the handing hardware off the original shower curtain. Then I cut and hemmed the new shower curtain to size since a trailer shower is much smaller than a regular shower.  Instead of a traditional shower bar and rings we have glide tracks in our trailer bathroom with glide tape sewn to the very top edge of the shower curtain.

Glide tape is flexible plastic strips with little clips every 6 inches or so:













Using a zipper foot on your sewing machine, set your (hefty upholstery size) needle to a side position:












and sew along the top and bottom of the plastic glide tape strip directly onto the top inside of your fabric:













Trim off the excess and you are done! Snap that sassy curtain up onto the slide tape and take some photos:




SO much better.  More projects to come! Next time I'll be able to do full before/after photos as I wizened up and started snapping pics before I took things apart.

Off I go to clean my (ignored-for-a-month-because-I-was-sassifying-our-trailer) house...

Amanda - Vintage Dutch Girl


Check out all the posts from this Travel Trailer Makeover Series!

Friday, March 16, 2012

Keepin' it Real - Office Revamp...

Heyya there!

I am up to my earlobes with reorganizing/purging/cleaning/revamping our home.

We have a LOT of stuff that really does not enhance our lives. So, it's getting tossed out. Or rather, donated to our school thrift store.

Evidence of our madness:

I firmly believe in the ministry of mediocrity.

Aka: KEEPIN' IT REAL, GIRLFRIEND.

First up, home office.

My hubby does part of his office management from home and needed some more storage, filing cabinets, ya know....STUFF.

So that meant:

New furniture! YAY!

Shopped forevah and finally settled on Ballard Designs Tuscan Furniture Collection.
It FINALLY arrived, was set up, and I am slowly getting this office fully functional.

(Functional roughly translated: To have the ability to surf Pinterest at all times.)

Nah, not really (yes, really).

I've been looking (Pinterest, of course) and came up with a bunch of office organization ideas.

Our office is technically coded as a bedroom and has a nice large closet in it. Since our house has a shamefully low amount of storage we are going to maximize that closet.

One half of the closet will be for game storage. Yes....games.

Because we are nerds who have an insane amount of games that need to be stored. Carcassonne? Settlers? Dominion? With every single expansion you've ever heard of?! Yep, nerds like that.

Keepin' it real submission #2:

I tell ya, every time I try to ease a game or puzzle out of the pile three more smack me in the face. OUCH.

The other half of our office closet is for supplies and will hopefully look something like this:

Source: bhg.com via Amanda on Pinterest



Everything in its rightful place. Ah, the dream closet.

The reality:

I'll have you know I took this photo while standing on top of my large upright piano. Yep, risking my life to display my messy office. Keepin' it real.

And in closing, keepin' it real submission #4:

I'll have you know I took this photo well over a week ago...and that little orange snack bowl?

It's still there.

Like I said, keepin it REAL.

Off to sort through piles and pick up a little orange snack bowl...

Amanda- VintageDutchGirl

VintageDutchGirl is on Facebook...I chit chat over there when I'm not doing crafting to avoid my housework. C'mon over and say hi :)
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