Wow, it's Jan. 12th and this is my first post of the year......

Well, it's a new year and we have had so much going on. The love of my life had been off since Dec. 19th and around here that means a lot of family time. He finally went back to work and I took the week trying to get my house back in order (lots of laundry) and getting started back with schooling. We love having him home and wish he did not have to go back to work but nothing really gets done, house work wise, when he is home. We had a GREAT Christmas and New Year. However, this little gadget has taken over the living room and the rest of my families life.LOL
It is the Nintendo Wii. My honey and I are pretty much on the same page with not being real crazy about watching television or playing video games all the time. We had fought this little gadget for going on 2 years now but decided this year to break down.LOL All we have is the Wii sports game, that came with the system, and the Wii Play but the whole family just loves it. My son and honey are now in there playing baseball. I have to say it is a great game system for getting the whole family involved. We have it set up in the living room, so no one is locked away in the bedroom, away from the whole family and it's been so much fun. We are already huge board game fans and this is just a whole other level of family fun.

Now, this is what else we have been doing on our little hiatus. I painted, or rather, hubby painted my front and back door this wonderful shade of red. It was a HARD decision going with the red. I was wavering between black and red and asked hubby what he thought. He said you have talked about red for years. He was right!! I love the way it turned out!

The color is Spanish Tile from Lowe's.

Oh and I want to put something in that big bare area by the door. What do you think Susie, do I need one of your new, absolutely adorable, signs there? Oh, and I know that Gothic light fixture needs to go, it's on the list.

Then I, not hubby, primed and painted my mantel black. I got this wonderful idea from the great Mrs. Dot at Picket's Place. Of course, hers is so much prettier with all of it's great beefiness but I still love mine. I don't know exactly how I want to decorate my mantel but this is a good start. I also need to paint the stove insert.

Another one of the projects we got done was tiling the bathroom floor. If you look at the little potty room floor closely there, you will see this horrid epoxy painted concrete flooring, that was throughout the entire house. The previous owners came in and put down this Pergo laminate wood floor, which we like but they did not do the potty rooms. So we decided on a cheap peel and stick tile at Lowe's to cover up the hideous.

The bathtub and toilet are a yellow color, which I kind of like and we chose this tile to play off of the yellow. I think the improvement is 100%. Well, that is it for the projects and I bet my manly man hubby was glad to go back to work.LOL I'm just joking, he loves this stuff.

Our plans from now until his deployment, sniff, sniff, are as follows:

*Paint kitchen cabinets and add a cabinet.

*Tile other bathroom with the same peel and stick tile.

*Landscape front of house.

*Replace outdoor light fixtures.

*Paint front and back porches.

*Plant fruit trees.

*Work on new chicken house.

*Paint all of trim in the house a high gloss white.

*Get my enormous garden area ready and possibly start planting.

Oh, the list could go on and on.

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I should put this in a post of it's own, as it is so important, but it is hard enough for me to get one post up much less two. However, one huge thing that I want to add that we work on every new year and are doing this new year, is our Bible Reading Plan for the year. We each, even our not so little little man, try to read through the Bible every year. We work on a plan at the beginning of every year. This year I am reading some in the old Testament, some in the new Testament, some of a Psalm, and some of a Proverb every morning. It takes me about 30 minutes to read, pray and meditate. Just 30 minutes profoundly changes the tone of my entire day. I would encourage you, that if you are not doing something similar, try it!! Reading through the precious Word of God can be life changing.

Here is the site that I got my reading plan from:

http://www.oneyearbibleonline.com/readingplan/oneyearbiblereadingplan.pdf

It's not to late to start and get caught up with me. I usually fail miserably at this but in light of my honey leaving in July, I know that I will need to cling to the Word of God and am hoping to be victorious in my goal this year!!