Getting time to ourselves these days is a rarity.
Our days are usually filled with maintaining our home, preparing meals, earning an income and “tendin’ to our chillins.”
I so wish I was a southern gal..
Anyway, in short, our lives revolve around the wee ones in the home. It’s not a bad thing. And it’s what we prefer.
But the things we used to do before kids are MUCH different than what we fill our time with now. They were what we wanted to do. When we wanted to do them. And how we wanted to do them. On our terms.
And that is aaaaaaallllllll in the past.
So when my in-laws asked to have the kids for a THREE DAY SLEEPOVER, I about passed out.
THREE whole days to do whatever we wanted!?
UHSAYWHAT!?
And this isn’t the first time, nor the longest, that we have been away from the babes but this IS the first time we didn’t have an alternative agenda, such as a wedding or a trip.
So last Saturday at noon, Grammie and Poppie whisked our babes away and The Hubby and I stared at each other.
What would we do with our time?
While laying around watching movies for three days sounded heavenly, I just knew how much we could conquer with the now available time, so we started knocking things out.
The first thing we did was go to our storage shed and finish clearing it out. Now EVERYTHING we own is in our home and we are storage-shed free. After we got home and unloaded everything, we divided and conquered.
I knew I wanted a gallery wall and had Michael’s coupons burning in my pocket, so I went there and found exactly what I was looking for… and on super sale.
I then went to the paint store to get some supplies to work on a project I had been putting off, and then went home.
The Hubby went to Lowes and bought lumber to build a sofa table. Because he’s handy like that.
Once home I started my painting project of giving our grandmother clock a makeover, something I have been putting off for about 3-4 months. The fruity thing just wasn’t for me.
I gave it one coat of paint, and while drying hopped onto my computer and chose twelve photos to go into the new frames and ordered them on Costco.com.
After that I had a little more drying time, so I whipped out a blog post that was due on Monday. BOOM.
Feeling awesome.
Once done, I put a second coat on the clock and let it dry.
Meanwhile, The Hubby built the sofa table to fit the small space between the couch and our wall and still managed to give it a little side flair. All it needs now is a little paint.
The next day, The Hubby got up at 5:30 and went hunting, and I woke up at 9:00… YEAH… 9:00! and then went to my sweet friend’s house after picking up some Starbucks to get my hair done. My fab-ulous friend is an amazing hair-dresser and squeezed me in last minute which was SUCH a treat!
While she was doing my hair, I worked on a blog post and just enjoyed her company. After that, I ran over to Costco to pick up our gallery wall photos and a white elephant gift and appetizer for a holiday party later that evening. Oh, and lunch for The Hubby.
I ran home really quick and put together the gift and then went to a Stella and Dot party hosted by a friend. What was so nice was that normally I wouldn’t be able to go to TWO parties in one day with the kiddos, so this was a real treat! After the Stella and Dot I ran home for the goods and then went to the White Elephant holiday party.
Home around 6:45, I then touched up the clock, filled the frames with the photos and wrote another blog post.
And every year I make photo calendars for the grandparents, aunts, and uncles and make two different versions, so knowing I could sleep in I busted those out while Shutterfly still had a sale going, making it to bed around midnight.
By Monday the house was starting to look like a pit, so after waking up at 9… AGAIN, I cleaned the whole house, did all of our laundry, taped off the clock to paint another color, wrote out my grocery list of baked goods I was going to make for an upcoming party, went through the kids’ toys to donate and ate breakfast at noon.
After breakfast I finished painting the clock and then showered up and went out for a while to look for some throw pillows for a bench that would be done being built soon, some curtains for our front door and a pair of shutters for our living room.
Just perusing these stores without children in tow was a gift in itself!
And I found the perfect pillows and curtains at Tuesday Morning. After, I went to Walmart to do our grocery shopping and it was actually a pleasant experience! I didn’t even care about the lines BECAUSE I HAD NO KIDS!
Once home, I put the groceries away and put the wax coat on my clock and painted the face of it. I then hung the gallery wall photos and that was NOT easy!
The Hubby hung the curtains and then once dry, put the clock back together for me. That baby was finally DONE!
On Tuesday morning I woke up and baked my buns off for an upcoming party. Cookies, peppermint bark, and chocolate dipped oreos and pretzels. In-between bake times in the oven, I showered up and within MINUTES of being done, the kids were home.
AND I SO MISSED THEM!
I am exhausted just typing all of this out and re-living it, but doing these things, things that aren’t easy to do with littles around, was such a blessing to be able to do these things by ourselves, and actually gave us motivation AND a deadline to work toward.
This was such a gift! Thank you, Grammie and Poppie!
