Andy was home yesterday, so school was out. Instead...
We cleaned out this bathroom... er, closet. It used to be a bathroom, but the former owners took out the sink and toilet and stored extra carpet and wallpaper in it. Then we moved in, and... well, you will note the moving boxes still stacked up on that shelf? We'd like to turn this into usuable space -- a pantry maybe. Your pantry has mint green tile and yellowed pink wallpaper, too, doesn't it?
The contents coming out and available for plunder.
I ended up throwing out a lot of stuff. When we moved, the movers packed everything, including the contents of some of our trash cans. Those cardboard boxes in the picture above were mostly full of stuff that should have been thrown away before we moved. The problem with that was, I was 10 weeks pregnant with twins at the time, and my body did not want to cooperate with me.
I did find a few interesting things in the closet, like all the candles shaped like actual "things": pineapples, apples, water lilies... I guess I used to have a "thing" for those, myself.
And I found this:
... which I took a picture of for posterity. I'm not sure what to do with it. I actually made this out of old greeting cards, lo, these many years ago. I used to put it out for Easter.
After the mad decluttering of the morning, Andy took Gareth and Katydid to get their hair cut and to run a few errands, while the little boys -- still recovering slowly from their colds -- stayed home with me. Farmerboy was bored out of his mind without his big brother and sister. He watched Reading Rainbow while I finished up the quarterly reports, and then we made this:
A mitten tree! Farmerboy's idea, after reading The Missing Mitten Mystery, which is all about a boy who loses his mitten and imagines everything that might have happened to it. At one point, he imagines what it would be like if mittens grew on trees. Voila -- the mitten tree. With lots of glitter for snow. (The red line is a ladder to harvest the mittens.)
When Andy got home, he decided to try his hand at a no-bake maple cheesecake. (I would put up a picture, but he didn't want me to take one of him cooking. :P)
The cheesecake didn't actually set and it was incredibly sweet, but in small bits it was like eating candy soup with graham crackers! And pretty good for a guy whose prior cooking experience has mostly consisted of boxed macaroni and cheese. (Thank you, dear, and I'm sure I can find you some willing volunteers for your next maple cheesecake experiment.)
And that was our day. Now to get started on another one!
LOL! No, our "pantry" has cheap plastic yellow tile (must've been all the rage in the 40s) and little vents at the top of the door. There are holes in the floor where the sink and toilet used to be, courtesy the previous owners, as well.
We're thinking of turning it back into a half bath--actually a shower & sink--but I don't know where I'll put all the stuff that's currently stored in there! Civil War era farm houses are not known for their closet space....
Sounds like you had a wonderfully productive day!
Warmly,
Eileen
Posted by: Eileen | January 22, 2008 at 10:43 AM
Sounds productive! Amazing what you find,isn't it?
Posted by: SuzanneG | January 22, 2008 at 11:18 PM