Sometimes I'm Awesome

I do a lot of DIY projects, not necessarily because I always like it, but because I'm kind of a cheapskate  Most of the time, my plans don't work out the way I hoped. But I still try. And my latest project actually worked out. I was so happy after I realized it was going to work that I took pictures so I could show you all. I call it, Wrought Iron Curtain Rods for a dollar. Yes, I italicize and capitalize in my mind too, it's that awesome. Yep. Here's the list of needed items.

Black craft foam sheet
PVC pipe (at desired length and width)
Christmas ornaments
Hot glue
Flat black spray paint
L bracket

Most of those items I already had. I was making rods for 3 windows, so I bought like 3 10 foot lengths of PVC at Home Depot for something like 39 cents each. Then I got the Christmas ornaments for 7 for a dollar at the dollar store, and the dollar spray paint at Walmart. The L brackets I bought 4 for 2 dollars. They're just the cheap brass looking kind, two inches long on each side. I had everything else, but I think you can get a paper sized sheet of the craft foam for really cheap (you don't need much of it.)

Cut your PVC to the desired size. You'll probably want it to extend beyond your window a few inches on each side. We used charlie's Leatherman saw blade to do it. No need for one of those fancy pipe cutters, unless you already have one, and then, you know, might as well use it. Then get your L brackets, ornaments, and pipe and get painting. This is obviously the most time consuming part. You may want to give them a couple coats. We painted them first with primer because we had some, but it didn't seem to make much difference. The paint still scratched off kinda easy. I figured it didn't really matter if I was careful, since once they were up, they would be hard to scratch. But if you plan to have those metal ring on it to hold your curtain, you may have to rethink the quality of paint used. There may be more steps in this case. You just have to decide whether it's worth it the extra few bucks. It wasn't for me. I did do three coats of paint though. I ended up using less than 3 cans for everything, but you could do with even less if you're less picky.

Then you measure the circumference of the pipe, and out of the foam cut little 1.5 inch strips the length of the pipe circumference.

Then put a line of hot glue along the short edge and quickly bring the two short ends together, making a circle.

After its dry, reshape it into a the best circle you can, and then put a line of glue along the side.

Stick it onto the end of the ornament, covering the loop end. Hold it on tight until it dries.

Then simply slip on the curtain, and slip on the little end you just made.

Then you just have to attach your brackets to the wall and the rod to the brackets via screws.

The end.













Awesome.

Bloggy stuff

I lose stuff a lot. And forget stuff. You know, like forgetting to turn the car off before I get out, or forgeting where I parked or which car I was driving or what my car even looks like; the kind of stuff that makes people say, "Faralee, there is something seriously wrong with your head." That hurts my feelbads, but they are right. There is. I believe its called absent minded. It sure sounds serious. Like, "Oh, she does have a brain and everything, just the mind is gone. So sad."

I lost my purse the other day at school. I do that a lot. And I don't always find it again, since it takes a while for me to even notice it is gone, and I don't even know where I had it last. This particular time I would have been stranded had I not found it, since it contained my phone and keys and money and everything. After lots of searching and frustration and bugging random strangers, I luckily (luck didn't really have anything to do with it) encountered some janitorial staff moving some rolling chairs with my purse draped over the top. I screamed and swiped it and muttered something about thanks that's mine and they got away from me as fast as they could. Phew, disaster averted. Luckily I remembered where I was parked, and found my car (I recognized it by the puke stain on the dashboard), and made it out there only an hour late. Maybe I need a different purse. Like one that can be surgically attached to me.

Wahoo!!

Well, we found a house, made an offer and the offer has been accepted!! Sorry we didn't update our progress along the way, we were just trying not to get too excited prematurely. Someone else did make another offer on it at the same time as us. We were worried we would end up in the same boat as with the other house, since we didn't have a lot of leeway on the price we'd already offered. But in the end, we did get it. Phew, super stressful for me! There is still more paperwork to be signed before things can even get started, but that should happen today. Of course, nothing is ever for sure until they are giving you the keys, but we have decided to allow ourselves a little excitement now. Yippee, we found a house! It is bank owned, in Spanish Fork, and built in 2006. We saw it on the market a while ago, but never went to see it because the price seemed a little steep for the square feet. But it turns out almost all the information on the listing was wrong. The house actually has a thousand more square feet than listed, one more bedroom and bathroom than listed. They had it listed with the wrong year, the wrong acreage, even the pictures misrepresented it. And there are lots of cool features in the house that the listing never mentioned, like custom doors and brushed nickel finishes and a huge master suite. Its not super fancy, but it has a good layout its big and open. It's really kinda sad for the bank that their Realtor didn't try very hard (or at all), but happy for us to have found it in our price range.We got a new couch to celebrate the occasion. 'New' being a term which here means saggy, threadbare, smelly, but free. Anyway, here are some pictures! Elesa was nice enough to come take these for us.

The front

Lydia in the backyard.

Front entry/living room - into family room

Scroungy Faralee wondering how she is

going to keep her house clean.

Kitchen

Landing/bonus area

Master bedroom

Master Bathroom

Owen hiding from Colin (not becuase they

were playing, but because Owen is scared of him).

Well, Thanks Elesa and Richard for coming to take pictures.

We hope all goes well, but we'll let y'all know. Our closing date is the end of September, so we still got a while. Luckily there is lots to do in the meantime. Hurray!

House Hunters, Utah Valley

So we are house hunting, and I hate it. And also love it. For pretty much the same reasons. It's always fun looking at pictures of houses and imagining the possibilities. But then I always feel disappointed when we go see the house if it didn't live up to its pictures or maybe just didn't feel right. It makes it kinda hard to get excited about a house unless I have actually seen it. But going to see too many houses is exhausting too. The other thing is, it is almost impossible to predict what Charlie will like (but he says the same about me). We do have an agent and he is great, but I guess it takes a lot to please us. The right house not only has to be the right size. right layout, right price, be in relatively good condition, and have a good lot size, but also it just has to feel like us. We are nerdy, eccentric, hip, Latin, boring people. And we want our house to reflect that. Hah. I'm not sure that is ever going to happen. Luckily, we are adaptable. If we could just find a house that felt homey for both of us, we would get it. A while ago, we found a house both Charlie and I liked (crazy), But we low-balled our offer too much I guess, because they took another offer. We knew there was another offer, but we weren't really sure how high to counteroffer, and anyway now its too late. So here we are looking again. There seems to be a lot of people looking right now, which is kind of a surprise. Great priced houses are going really fast. But there aren't really a ton of great priced houses out there, so that may be why. At least in this area. Unless you want to get a short sale, and we kinda don't. There are a few bank-owned on the market. But I know there are more foreclosures than are listed, and I don't know why they don't list them. What is the plan here, does anyone know? Why do I have to sign up and pay for a service to tell me the foreclosures? Why don't they just list them so the consumers can find them? Don't they want to sell them?? Ok, that is the end of my tirade. Get back to you when we have any news.

Technology is awesome

Charlie's brother Jason has been staying in Provo for the past couple weeks. He has been helping his sister Nicole fix up their house here. But mostly he's here to just get some new experiences before he goes on his mission. He put his papers in just before he came. Well, a few days ago, Nicole's fiancée messaged me on Facebook to say that his call had arrived. So we planned to gather at my house during lunch time so Charlie could come too. As soon as everyone arrived we set up two computers with Skype, one for Charlie's other sister Melissa in New Mexico, and one for Charlie's parents in Bolivia. At the house in Bolivia they set up a projector and invited grandparents and the Bishop. We got them on the phone too, just to be sure we wouldn't lose them halfway through (their internet there isn't the fastest or the most reliable.) We had a full devotional with the whole family including prayers and songs. The singing was funny, since we were all singing in different languages at my house (we had one Spanish hymn book, one English, one Portuguese and one Chinese) and also the timing was different for every location, but it was a blast.

He got his call to the Canada Calgary mission. Wow, I did not see that coming. Thats where my dad went too (back when it was called Western Canada) and my future brother in law went there so he immediately started crying when the call was read. For me, besides the joy of knowing what my brother in law had to look forward to, and being excited for him, I also felt such gratitude for the technology that allowed all that to happen. We were able to share a spiritual family gathering together, even though were half the world apart. 100 years ago, we wouldn't even have been able to contact each other without it taking a couple days. Now we can instant message and video chat for free. So cool. Technology has its ills, no doubt about it. There is a lot of distraction and even evil to be found there. But I truly believe that technology can be a blessing as well.

I'm bad at this...

Its really really hard for me to post sometimes. Its like writing in my journal. I feel like I can't write unless something really extraordinarily happens. Only problem is, if something big every happens (which, lets face it, my days are pretty consistently predictable) I am way to busy to think of writing about it. Oh well, always good to have an area in which I need to improve. Or two. Or infinity.

So here's a basic update. Lydia starts kindergarten in the fall. I don't know how that happened. Owen talks a ton, and is always finding ways of asserting his independence. The other day, he was playing with his sister and cousin. The two girls were playing something which involved princesses, and riding ponies around. they starting galloping around saying neigh! neigh! As Owen galloped by, I heard that he had changed his neigh, neigh to a moo moo. The road less traveled, I suppose.

I just got done reading two awesome books, 123 Magic and Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. Life changing on both accounts. 123 Magic is a parenting book. Its simple to follow, and has made my home and my heart 20 times more peaceful. Course, we were starting from total chaos, so its still a bit hectic every day, but thus is the nature of parenthood I guess. Total Money Makeover was a gift from my sister, and is basically a simple guide to staying within your means. Whether or not it leads us to wealth, it definitely could keep them us of debt and prepared for life's unforeseen emergencies. Very good book. I would highly recommend them both to anyone and everyone.

The End.

This is really important stuff here

Ok, so in my mind, clothes can be in one of two categories. They are either dirty or clean. Seems clear enough, maybe even goes without saying. But for Charlie (and many others of you I am sure) clothes can also be in a third category: the "not quite dirty enough to be washed yet but too dirty to be put back in the drawer" category. He is unwilling to put them in the dirty clothes basket, because then, you know, even if he could fish them out later, it would be too late, they would already have become contaminated by all those other dirty clothes. Unwearable. But he also can't put them away in his drawer, because then the partial dirtiness would contaminate all those other clean clothes. Or maybe its just that he wants to know before he chooses to wear them again that they are on their second run, so he must have a third area to keep everything strait: a filing system for his clothes, of sorts. Charlie is a very clean person, cleaner than me for sure. And so he is always consistent in where he chooses to file his not-quite-dirty clothes. And I, being a not-quite-dirty person, promptly remove them from said area and put them where I believe they belong: in the dirty clothes basket or back in the drawer. It can, occasionally become a source of frustration for both of us.

On a side note that may seem unrelated, one time I went to an education week lesson where the speaker talked about doing more of what works, and less of what doesn't. He gave an example of a wife who was tired of cleaning up her husband's socks from the foot of the bed, and nagging didn't do anything but increase tension. She finally made a special dirty clothes bin at the foot of the bed for him, and they never had any problems with it again. Sounds applicable to my situation, doesn't it? Well, ever since i heard this lesson, I have really tried to find a solution that works for us both. I can't use a special bin for him, because he feels too much like it is a dirty clothes bin and so he won't use it. I've also tried a special hanger, but then its too close to his other clean clothes. Its quite a delema. And, obviously extremely important to our future, perhaps to the future of humanity. I still don't have the perfect answer. Anyone out there found something that works for them? Fess up, I know there are some of you with a not-quite-dirty clothes category out there. Have you found a solution that might be universally applicable?

Other side note, in case there is some worry, this is not really a source of contention for Charlie and I. Sometimes, it means some intense under-the-breath grumbling. Mostly, its just silliness.

All fine here...

Nothing super interesting to say. Just changed the name of the blog from Bolivian Chronicals to Pozo Chronicles. Happy to be back. Still adjusting and there are lots of people to miss. But we are having fun living in Fae and Lances Basement. Finally getting things settled in. So from now on this blog will be just a family news type blog. Sounds kind of dreary when I put it that way doesn't it?But I will be sure to post lots of pictures of my kids, so that should be fun. And we'll probably have some Spanish readers, so we may post some things in Spanish, if we remember to do so. Anyway, thanks ya'll for keeping up with us in our adventures. Your support has meant a lot.

reflections

Well, I'm back in the states. We're in Orlando for a week before we head back to Utah. We're spending some time in Disney world and Universal, just enjoying a vacation before we get back to real life. Its been a blast so far. Charlie's family is here with us too, and its been really fun so far.

As I reflect on our experience in Bolivia, I've come up with some lists. What an exciting way to sum up my trip, huh?

Things I'm kinda looking forward to getting back to:

dishwasher
garbage disposal
clean water from the tap that doesn't have to be boiled and filtered
flushing the toilet paper
Walmart
dollar hamburgers
being able to drive
snow


Things I'm REALLY looking forward to:

My family


Things I'm sad about leaving behind

My other family
My primary kids
Greeting with a kiss
My cute apartment and the view out the window
The constant language immersion


Things I gained that I'll have forever...I hope

A better understanding of my husband through his culture
Better Spanish
My kids becoming Bolivian
A close relationship with and love for my in-laws
A love for the culture

We have really really enjoyed our time in Bolivia, and its hard to get back, even though we are excited to see my family and friends. We know it was the right place to be because we were so so blessed for it. See you all soon! After a quick trip to Walmart of course.