Clean Office Project

Today was the day to re-arrange and clean my office. Since Mark bought me a brand spankin’ new vacuum cleaner the other day, I thought I would see if I could break it by vacuuming up copious amounts of dog hair out of my office carpet (the carpet is eventually going to be replaced with laminate, but until then - we torture vacuums).

The biggest issue I had been facing with my office now occupying the extra main-floor bedroom, was the addition of the six dog crates into the room. My dogs spend their day with me, as I work - and that was a great setup, when I had my office in its original location downstairs. Then we decided to dog-proof that room and create a ‘dog room’ with a dog door and access to their fenced outside potty area. So the dogs got my office for their bedroom, and my office moved to the downstairs family room. The dogs could still spend the day with me, and be close to their outdoor access. This worked well, until I realized how much time I had to spend running upstairs to switch laundry, cook, tend to children, etc… and so I decided to take the ‘guest room’ and convert that into my new office. I like the new location, but I have less square footage than either of my previous two office locations. To say it was cramped, would be an understatement. Oh, and did I mention, this office also serves as my sewing/craft room. Yeah - it’s a multi-tasking room and it was a mess.

I’ll will spare you any before pictures. It was too horrid to share; but here are the after photos.

This first photo shows my computer desk, stacked drawers and the folding table I added to hold the homeschooling materials.

A better view of the homeschooling center, and that white cabinet to the left, is my sewing & serger machine cabinet.

And finally, a view of the newly stacked dog crates. I did not have them stacked before, so you can imagine the floor space they took. Why the dog crates, you may ask… well, I have one 5 month old puppy and another that turned 1 year old today (Happy Birthday Henry!), and they are not reliably housebroken. Also, I have gotten four new dogs since Christmas 2007, so they have not yet proven themselves to all be 100% trustworthy in the housebreaking department: so we have scheduled potty times, play times and then crate times to avoid accidents in the house. If I can’t watch them 100% at that moment, then I crate them. This also avoids puppies chewing on furniture, power cords, etc…. So it’s an all-around training method that works well. In case you were wondering: the dogs do not spend their entire day and night crated! They get at least 2 hours every day outside running and playing, in addition to supervised time roaming around the house and laying on my lap, at my feet, on the couch, in my office chair, etc… At night, the office becomes the dogs’ bedroom. It works for us. The stacking (and yes, they are tethered/anchored together to avoid the top one from falling off), freed up some floor space - which I desperately needed.

Next phase of the home office project will be painting the walls, installing new laminate flooring and overhead storage cabinets, and cleaning out and organizing the large closet in this room and installing an organizer system. It will definitely be a large project, but will be awesome when it’s finished.

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Written by Traci Knoppe ©: Aside from her roles as wife, mother of six, mother-in-law and grandmother, Traci is a Christian women's mentor, parenting instructor, Sunday school teacher, author, public speaker, women's ministry leader at T2CHK, business owner and a Certified ObesityHelp.com Support Group Leader.

So the dogs wake me up at 4:00 am on this vacation morning (yeah, I wasn’t too happy!) and of course, I can’t go back to sleep once I’m up; so I come in to check email and my RSS blog feeds. Nearly every single day, I read Chocolatechic’s blog. She’s on my T2CHK message board, and I can relate to her writing style, sense of humor and her love of all things pink and chocolate! One area where her and I part ways: cooking. This woman cooks, her son cooks and some lovely looking recipes too! Me and cooking have a love hate relationship: I love to hate cooking. I truly am amazed at people who enjoy the task of cooking. I do cook, of course, my family has to eat and I get tired of having to run out every day for take-out (no, we don’t eat take-out every day, nor even every week - but oh I wish!). I can cook, and haven’t killed anyone yet with food poisoning or truly horrid fare; but ability does not always equal desire.

One thing my soon-to-be 8 year old daughter Emily always tells me, is that I make the best biscuits. Yes, I actually make mine from scratch and always have.  I know - you’re shocked, me too; opening a can is so much easier, but the few times I’ve done this, my children turn up their noses and won’t eat canned biscuits. Who knew I was raising food snobs!

So imagine my surprise, and admittedly, a bit of delight, when I read on Chocolatechic’s blog this morning that she’s joined in with the Tuesday’s With Dorie crowd to bake a new recipe each week from Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan; because I actually like love to bake. I don’t do so as often as I would perhaps like, as the foods I usually bake aren’t exactly those one needs to eat often (i.e. cakes, pies, cookies, etc..) . However, I could certainly do one recipe a week for the Tuesday’s With Dorie and so I ’skipped’ off to Amazon this morning and purchased my ‘nearly new’ copy of Baking From My Home To Yours .  So as soon as my book arrives, I can sign-up to join the others and bake a new recipe each week.

Now if I could just catch similar enthusiasm for cooking.  If you know of a site similar to Tuesdays With Dorie, only for meals (preferably from scratch/real-whole foods) then please, let me know the site link.  I hesitate to say I will ever love cooking, but hey - ya never know!  I think I will continue to struggle with this odd split in my personality:  love of baking vs. dislike of cooking.

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Written by Traci Knoppe ©: Aside from her roles as wife, mother of six, mother-in-law and grandmother, Traci is a Christian women's mentor, parenting instructor, Sunday school teacher, author, public speaker, women's ministry leader at T2CHK, business owner and a Certified ObesityHelp.com Support Group Leader.

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Yes, I’m on day four, as days two and three were spent at home not doing anything overly noteworthy. 

Today was day four of our family vacation and we took the children to Meramec Caverns, which is about 10 minutes from our house here in Sullivan.  Our intention was to do their ‘Dino Dig’ and the riverboat tour.  Well, the Dino Dig wasn’t open - so that was out.  Hannah was in ‘fine form’ (as you will see in one particular photo below), so we knew that the 1 hour 20 minute walking cave tour was not going to be an option; so we learned some about caves and caverns and some history about Stanton and Sullivan (where we live) and went on the riverboat tour.

So we started out by reading and learning some local history and about caves and caverns.

(Yes, Hannah had some attitude today.  *sigh*)

Then is was off to the riverboat tour.  We learned a lot and saw a beaver, baby ducks, a Blue Heron and lots of turtles.  Unfortunately, my camera isn’t the best and I did not get photos of all of it.  Here’s what I did get.

You might need to click to see the larger version of this photo to see the turtles lined up on the log

And then, a block or two from our house, on our very street, we saw the huge vulture in the road, that we then scared off onto the roof of this house, where we got this photo.

So to end Vacation 2008 Day Four, we will be having KFC for supper and relaxing.  I think tomorrow we’re going to see Wall-e at the movies and that’s about it.   We have more exciting adventures planned for Thursday or Friday.  So stay tuned! 

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Written by Traci Knoppe ©: Aside from her roles as wife, mother of six, mother-in-law and grandmother, Traci is a Christian women's mentor, parenting instructor, Sunday school teacher, author, public speaker, women's ministry leader at T2CHK, business owner and a Certified ObesityHelp.com Support Group Leader.

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