Thursday, April 30, 2009

How Great Thou Art

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works Thy hands have made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee:
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze.

And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

When Christ shall come with shouts of acclamation
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!
Then I shall bow in humble adoration,
And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou art!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Because I know you want to know :)

As spring [slowly] arrives, I am trying to do little projects around the house to update decor and become more organized. It seems we will be living in this house for at least another year [or 12] so by making inexpensive little changes, I feel like it is more 'home' and not just the house we live in for now. It gets a little depressing having no money to buy all new furniture & decor and since we are renting, we can't really do a lot. Our landlords are great, and if we want to paint, they don't mind as long as we paint over it when we move out, but thats a lot of work and money to spend on something that won't last!

Here is a little peak at some of the projects I've been doing so far :)







As much as I LOVE wood paneling, trying to hide it has been a top priority! We have a ridiculous amount of books and movies and figured this tall shelf would serve the purpose of housing stuff and [sort of] hiding the paneling! [Daniel's spider plant needed a home, too. He's had it since before we started dating which was 7 years ago..and I haven't killed it yet!!]



My jewelry has been taking over our dresser for the past 4 1/2 years, always getting tangled and falling behind the dresser. We had some hooks for a different project and I found this wooden dowel in a box of old stuff and it was the perfect fit! Now I can display my 'pretties' [as Bella calls them] and have easy access without worrying about breaking them!



I love our sea shell toilet seat! [notice: the organized bin of bath time supplies that used to be thrown on the floor under the sink..]



I needed something to go above the toilet and had in mind what I wanted. Two years ago at our ladies gift exchange at church, my friend Whitney brought this 'Dance like no one is watching..' framed quote and I ended up with it - not even planned - and it's perfect! My collection of shells from childhood beach vacations, a bottle of sand from a friend's trip to Hawaii, coral from Florida from my grandparents and the knot, 'In every home where I am found, love and happiness will abound,' from Daniel's aunt, bring good memories and complete our ocean theme.



I wanted gray [like the ocean sky] and Daniel loves bright colors, so we got a great compromise in this curtain! :)



Our bathroom was a lovely shade of very questionable lemon meringue pie with pepto bismol pink showing through the chipped edges. As pretty as that sounds, it was getting rather..nauseating. So I sprung for a can of a soothing powdery blueish-gray to match our towels & ocean theme. We got a new shower curtain and Rachael helped with the art work for the wall. Some craft paint, sponge brushes and $6 for 3 canvases really brightened up the empty wall space!



This nightstand has been redwhiteandblue probably since I was in 4th grade. I decided it was finally time to 'grow it up' a little and found this great design in a magazine! I borrowed the brown base coat from Sarah and used craft paints I already had from previous projects to paint the design!


My next projects will be:

getting our garden in 'growing' order [yay for no Fatty Fatty Kitty to poop on our flowers!]
re-oganizing the kitchen
re-organizing our closets
re-organizing Tobias & BellaBabe's closets [started, need to finish]
paint Tobias' dresser to match his room
build 'wrap around' shelf in Tobias' closet
make slip cover[s] for couch[es] & throw pillows
hang photos in hallway [again - I moved them and am moving them back]
paint over hunting dog/pheasant wall paper in dining room [must get landlords approval..]