The Elves and the Shoemaker

The only progress made so far on my spring cleaning project is that I now have more clean laundry than dirty. Not put away laundry, or even folded laundry, but clean laundry at least.

Sigh. . .

I remember this story I loved as a child, The Elves and the Shoemaker, a Grimm's Fairy Tale. In the story, the poor shoemaker is barely making a living, scraping by, and finds himself with enough leather for only one more pair of shoes. Before bed, he carefully cuts and lays out his leather, preparing to make the shoes the next day. When he returns the next morning, instead of cut outs for a pair of shoes, there is a completed pair of shoes! He sells the shoes the next day to a gentleman who pays double the normal price because of the fine quality. Then, before bed he leaves out cut outs for two pairs of shoes, and the next morning, you guessed it, two pairs of completed shoes greeted the old shoemaker!! The shoemaker and his wife end up living happily ever after, wealthy from the elves work, of course.

How I wish I had my own set of elves. If I could start a task at night, go to bed, then wake up with the task finished, or wake up with double or triple the task complete! I'm putting in my order right now. One set of house-cleaning elves, STAT!

The Never Ending Home Improvement Project

I've already broken my blog a day commitment. Yes, I admit it, I am a procrastinator! In my defense, I had a week-long head ache, so looking at the screen for prolonged periods of time hurt.

Being down for the week came at an inopportune time for me. You see, I am suffering from a bad case of Spring Fever and the weather was nice enough to get some tasks accomplished.

You see, while I am not a neat freak, over the years I have at least become semi-adept at organizing a household. However, about this time last year I became pretty ill due to pregnancy and the house just kinda fell apart around me. As I said, I am not a neat freak, but the clutter has become even more than I can stand!

On top of the pregnancy and new baby neglect, we have the construction mess. We are in the process of remodeling the basement to provide my oldest a bedroom of her own. The project was already taking longer than we had anticipated when last week's rain and snow melt showed us that all the money we had spent sealing the cinder block walls had been for naught, we flooded AGAIN! This was the main issue we had been trying to fix! Granted, the flooding was not to the extent it was before we applied a million coats of sealant, but still, there was WATER seeping in my HOUSE! Sigh.

We did find some place where there appeared to be cracks in the sealant, so those are now painted also. My husband also did quite a bit of digging and finished off some drainage piping under the house. We are now waiting to see if the dam holds, so to speak, before we can continue with the bedroom project. We're ready to hang sheet rock as soon as we know we'll be dry for a while.

I just realized I need to get down there and snap some work in progress pictures. I had some "before" shots, but I think I accidentally deleted them, oops!

I suppose that's enough on the never ending home improvement project for now, lol.

a.

Second Day of Spring

Yesterday was the first day of spring. There are little buds popping out all over everything. The daffodils and forsythia are in bloom. My garden is tilled and two new raised beds await planting. There is several inches of snow on the ground. . .

Yep, you read that right, SNOW.

UGH!!!

It's been a long, cold winter and I am more than ready for some sunshine. I have tons of seeds just waiting to go into the ground, and we have lots of work left to do on Pandora's bedroom in the basement. IF ONLY THE WEATHER WOULD COOPERATE!!!

In happier news, Jack is doing so wonderful! I plan on eventually using him as a therapy dog. He is just so smart, and so sweet! He catches on to what I want him do do very quickly, which is wonderful! I am so happy to have this little pup in my life!

Are Your Eyes Bleeding?

Just wondering if the colour scheme I have chosen for the blog is too dark and perhaps painful to view for some?