Wednesday, May 6, 2015

I love my mom, but I hate Mothers Day

As an adult, I've always wondered how sweet mothers day would be once you become a mother. For years, I've been ready to have a family of my own and once my marriage fell apart it has become apparent that I get to wait for God a little longer... I'm really bad at waiting... just in case I'd not mentioned that before.

Mother's Day super sucked last year... and its shaping up to be equally crappy this year.

Last year, on Valentines Day 2014, I found out that I was pregnant... a few weeks later, I had found out I miscarried - literally 2 days before my marriage fell apart. At that point, I literally felt as if I'd lost everything... and I kind of had. Yes, I was still so thankful for my mom & dad & sister & health and all of that stuff that are a given. But everything I'd worked for in my adult life had been ripped away. They say God will wreck your plans if He sees they are getting ready to wreck you. I fully believe that is what he did. I know without a doubt he has a greater plan for me than the situation I was in - but it doesn't make the pain of a lost pregnancy any less painful, but especially at Mothers Day.

I just saw a post about what it means when moms say they don't want anything for mothers day and it jokingly picked at all of the things like they didn't want: to be woken up early and didn't want boogers on them for a whole day... cute, funny... I get it. But, I hope this Mothers Day, if you have littles running around and getting you all boogery - you take a minute to recognize the overwhelming blessings you have instead of only how overwhelmed you are, that they are lots of women out there who'd love to have your messy crazy busy days raising little ones.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

When life gives you a bear rug...

A little over a year ago, on my way home from Ben's Christmas party a bear jumped out in front of me and it died. So, yeah, what exactly are you supposed to do when you're from Southwest Virginia, your honda is on the side of the road all torn up, there is a dead bear in the guard rail and your husband was driving behind you in his flat bed pickup... You tell the officers to load her up, we are going to do something with it.  
In all honesty, it hurt. Like whoa... Sore for day. But anyway, did you know that if you don't have a tag to kill a bear you are not supposed to kill a bear... So once we went through the actual phone book to find a taxidermist who would answer his phone at 8am on Sunday we learned that little fact about the tag. He wouldn't touch it without a tag. So we then had to go to the sheriffs office to get a tag. Thankfully it was cold and the bear didn't get hot and smelly in all of this time to get it to the taxidermist. Once we get to the taxidermist we settled on a fact that we would do a rug. A. Cheaper than a full mount. B. I could put it in a closet if I got tired of him. Holy moly. Have you ever seen a bear skinned?! Tis gross. Anyway, fast forward 6 months and we have a bear rug.
I laid it by bens piano for a few months but that was far more work than it was worth with 2 dogs. So... Lil bear has been laying on a bed in a spare bed room for quite some time now. I had a really crummy makeshift headboard in that guest bedroom and finally it him me! Lil bear could be a "headboard"! We have never had an overnight guest in the 4 years we have lived here, so I'm pretty sure it won't give anyone nightmares. I kinda love how it turned out. So if you have a spare bear rug laying around, think outside of the box. It can be fun! 

Sunday, February 9, 2014

I just stole an office!

The Boss has recently moved his office out of the house to his new pharmacy building... thank goodness. But moving everything did leave us with a bit of a disaster in both his office and our living room, since he felt the need to have a couch in his office. Once we finally completed our move for the business his office turned into a "oh thats the perfect place to stash that" room... oops.

Once I finally made it through the disaster, I still was not sure what to do with this room. I already have 2 spare bedrooms that are never used. So it hit me, I need an office... for all of my junk; my paint, my projects and my "things". I immediately decided on a color scheme of coral and gold and went to it! I finished painting one evening and the next day I went "junkin" to find me some goodies to decorate with. 






By far, the best find was this antique tapestry screen. It was 4 sections and I knew that somehow I wanted to make it into a table... but I wasn't sure how. The easiest and most practical solution to me was sawhorses, but I didn't want any ole sawhorses I wanted ones filled with character and age... but I couldn't find anything. Anywhere. So I resorted to some new metal fold out sawhorses that I distressed.


I had no idea what to do with all of these old crates that gravitated towards the junk room... so I thought they made a pretty clever storage solution. 

I'm thrilled with the outcome. I still have to add some photos to frames and some other small decorative touches and I still need curtains and a rug... but this little room is well on its way to being a great little space for all of my junk.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog! I'm Kalyn... that's me!  I've tried a few times before to keep a blog up... but I'm doing it this time! I'm excited to document my life... for me, for you, for the future. I've been a photographer since 2007... but that has taken a little bit of a backseat to life.

I've got lots of projects going on right now... so I'm excited to keep you updated with whats going on. I'm currently on a warpath cleaning out my house... I'm sick of the clutter and chaos. As I'm cleaning out, I'm organizing everything. I will be posting photos of the progress of that as well as some of the mess! Of course I'll be flooding you with pictures of the pups (sweet Winston and weird Dudley) and the boss (errrrrr, Ben -he thinks he is the boss).
So this is my adventure... the day to day and the dream.