16.8.11

New blogging thoughts, and My House Part 1

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Well, we just got home this last week from spending the summer up at Golden Bell camp ground in Colorado. It was a lovely deal, because we missed the worst of Oklahoma's heat and lived in the gorgeous weather that is to be found at 9200 ft... I think we may have hit around 85 on a hot day this summer.

We did not have much internet access over the summer and were very busy, hence the non-post-ness on my blog, but I am now back in the land of computers and some slight amount of free time, so hopefully the situation can be remedied. I also may have found a solution for the other reason that I almost never post on my blog: lack of something to write about. I mean, I have an exciting life and all but I just can't ever think of anything of interest about my life to broadcast to the world.

However, I was reading through a blog of a friend of mine, who talks about the way she lives a mostly chemical-free, eco-friendly lifestyle by cooking from scratch for her family and home-making a lot of things. (see her blog here: http://mindofthemother.blogspot.com/) It came to my attention that the way I live isn't the way every newly married housewife who is going to college full-time lives. For example, we live rent-free because we basically rebuilt the inside of a gutted house. We live on $40 a week for groceries and eat really well because I make everything from scratch. I spent next to nothing on clothes because I make or thrift-store-buy all my clothes. Etc. Hence, I thought I might give a try to blogging about that kind of stuff... we'll see how it goes.

The first thing would obviously be our house. If you would have told me 10 months ago what this house would look like today I would not have believed you. The house is a couple blocks north of where I go to college, and our landlord is an old work friend of Morgan's. The previous renter/ occupant had completely trashed the house, after it had already endured years of neglect. The entire ceiling in the living room and half the kitchen was not sheetrocked. Most of the walls were either not sheetrocked, or the sheetrock had huge holes in it. There was trash all over the place. There were no kitchen cabinets, counters, sink, oven, fridge, etc. There was no bathroom sink. The toilet was broken (the stool part was cracked and leaking). The list goes on and on and on.

We, being the brilliant people we are, made the bright decision to "fix up the place" (on our $200 or so dollars in savings) during the three months prior to our wedding. This is the same three months in which 1) I was going to school full-time as a sophomore pre-med major. My hardest semester of college to-date. Approx 25 hours a week in class and lab.  2) We were planning a wedding.  3) Morgan was working a part-time job.  4) We were trying to figure out a relationship... we had just gotten engaged, and relationships at that stage take a lot of time to figure out!  5) I was recovering from mono.

It's a good thing we were ignorant of the fact that what we were going to do was completely impossible, because despite that fact, we did it. Granted, everything was not perfect. Granted, there were a few... ok, a lot... a whole lot... of tears shed along the way. But every time something was completely impossible, God seemed to show up and it happened. I guess I'll stop talking about it and try to show you some before-pictures... the pictures really don't do it justice, but oh well.

The living room (left to right, same room. See, some of the stuff in the middle is the same. =] )








Dining room and kitchen:

Spare bedroom (the boards in the front are actually all that there is of a wall between this room and the living room)




Bathroom:



From these pictures, you really cannot see at all how yucky the house really was. The mice, the gunk, the general feeling of dirtness is not communicated in the least.

Since it is late here and I did not have the forethought to take pictures of my house in the daylight (surprise!) I will wait and post the "after" pictures when I actually take them. Hopefully tomorrow. We shall see. =D