Prairie Scraps

 This the entry to our front door.  There is white carpet, so thick that the door doesn't even open without some major use of muscles.  I can't put a carpet here, to prevent the entry getting dirty, because the door would never open.  With 23 piano students coming through this door every week (and they walk across the muddy lawn to get there, because there are no sidewalks!), this area is getting dirty beyond repair!  To at least keep the entryway clean for now, while I talked Mr. Right into cutting out this section of carpet and replacing it with some laminate.  We actually found two boxes of brand new laminate at the Habitat for Humanity for $12 each.  The expensive part was the trim between the laminate and the carpet. It ended up close to $20 each and we needed three pieces, one for each side. If there was some way to do the transition trim cheaper, I would be all over that!  Here's the carpet and pad cut out.  We found red fir und...

As a young girl I was a huge fan of all the Laura Ingalls’ Books!  I read every single book in the series and even tried some of the extra books written by Laura’s daughter, Rose.  You can imagine how excited I was as an adult to find this lovely book, “A Prairie Girl’s Faith” by Stephen W. Hines which is an exploration into “The Spiritual Legacy of Laurie Ingall’s Wilder.” This book had many interesting thoughts and research on Laurie’s and Rose’s Spirituality, but it also included many findings on music, recipes and writings of the pioneer’s of this time period.  After reading this book, I yearn for more from Laura, herself on her own spiritual beliefs and growth.  Many findings seem to be supposition and the remainder of the book seems to be snippets of the rest of the Ingalls lives found through reading her newspaper articles. Overall, I enjoyed this book, but found it to be somewhat disjointed from the actual idea that it was on Laura’s spiritual legacy and...

We are converting our carport into another living room/piano studio, bathroom and much needed laundry room.  It’s all very exciting, but a lot of work.  Funny, we were talking to some friends who made it seem that they were doing some remodeling of their own in their own new home, and the look on their face when they realized that we were actually doing our own labor was priceless.  I guess when I say we’re remodeling, I actually mean we are doing the work.  When other’s say it, they mean they are paying someone else to do the work! Needless to say, one of the reasons that we are doing the work ourselves, is that it saves us money.  So, I’ve been frequenting the clearance aisle of Home Depot, just planning what is yet to come!  One time I was there, I found these tiles for the new bathroom!  I was worried a little about making the purchase too far in advance, so I took pictures and sent the to Mr. Right.  He actually was in Home Depot a few...

Last year, I gave my piano students a Christmas ornament that I found that had music around it.  This year, I noticed that some of my beginner students are learning to play their pieces with their left hand holding their book open.  They are always relieved when I clip their music open with my clothespin.  I decided to make some cute clothespins for my students to hold their books open for at home! Speaking of which, wondering what some good ideas are for gifts for your piano teacher this Christmas?  Here’s my top 5 ideas for your favorite piano teacher: Gift card to a favorite coffee shop, restaurant, or store. Amazon Gift Card. Gift Certificate to a favorite online music store (mine is www.pianopronto.com, btw!) Purchase something off of the studio/piano teacher’s online wish list.  Ask if they have one. Food item - chocolates, hot cocoa, wine, etc. These are just some of the things I like.  I’m currently building a new studio space in my ...

It seems hard to believe in today's day, that someone would give up everything and move to Uganda to run a non-profit and personally house African children, but that's exactly what Katie Davis Majors did.  Although this seems like an act of faith that not everyone has, "Daring to Hope" humanizes the struggles that Katie goes through personally, to continue on to love and care for people in desperate need of help. Katie has personally adopted 13 girls, but after having her own personal tragedy, is painfully afraid to open herself to loving another person. Life goes on for Katie, more people in need of love and care, even on their deathbeds are sent to her.  Can she open herself to love again?  Does she dare to hope that God will provide and give her the strength to love over and over, even knowing that person may die? Uganda and Katie's organization seem so far away from my own, busy life in America, but Katie brings her story of pain and suffering into an e...

Every renovation project has it’s setbacks, but it’s felt like our new-to-us home has had more than our share.  We had originally planned to enclose our carport area between our house and the carriage house.  It seems straight forward enough, but of course, our city government is involved, so we were at a standstill for several weeks, just waiting to get a building permit. As it stands, we are being required to add a sidewalk to the front of our house, to the tune of more than $25,000 for the entire thing!  There’s a telephone pole, a grade, a drainage ditch, the utility post for the entire neighborhood and our water meter in the way on one end.  Fortunately, it seems like the Public Works guy is on our side and is going to try to put an end to it, at least for now. Meanwhile, we bit the bullet, paid the deposit plus the building permit and were overjoyed to begin this additional living room project.  HALT!!!  Of course, that is if the local rental ...

We finally bought a house after our move across country from the Midwest five and a half years ago.  It's taken us all month to get into the house and start to get things put away.  Moving seven people while two are headed back to college was not an easy feat.  While this house is not super fancy, one of the things we loved about the house was the very large yard.  We have seven city lots in fact.  One of the things that we loved the most about home ownership was being able to garden. I'm not a fan of those really tall arborvitae trees on the left of this picture.  We have several of them around the property, mostly right up on the foundation and causing trouble with the house.  I personally don't like them and call them funeral trees, because they are what every cemetery has.  I'd like to just reserve them for funerals for now.  This one, isn't coming down just yet.  That big, pickery evergreen bush that takes up the side of th...