Hotel Kanenwisher

Let's just say, I had no idea what I was getting into when we decided to move into a house that had room for guests.

The last 12 months have been spent changing bedding sometimes a couple of times a week and cleaning bathrooms in between guests, providing vacations for all those who wanted.

After a melt down last week I was prepared to walk away from Retro house and living in a shoe box. When a woman I know approached me at church on Sunday and handed me a business card of two young ladies who were started a cleaning business, I nearly fell out of my seat. There was my answer.

It took two well-trained, hardworking women 4 hours to scrub my house top to bottom today.  The entire time, they worked up a sweat and kept telling me...."We don't know how you've done it".  There is no way I can keep this entire house clean by myself... like a hotel, keep a part-time job, 3 callings, Booster Club Vice President, 3 children's schedules and lives, with a husband who is gone 75% of the month.

Do I feel guilty?  No way.  Is it going to kill my budget.  Yep.  Do I care? No. Because I was almost to a point where I was either saying no to visitors or moving out.  I'm very serious.

My next issue will be food.  Hotel food.  It's like binge and purge.  I rarely eat out and I cook very simple meals.  When guests come I usually put on 3 lbs from eating out or cooking big meals.  Then the days they are gone, I'm working like crazy to lose the weight I've gained.  Anyone got solutions for this dilemma?

Until then...look at these unique hotels.

http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/07/18/12-unusual-and-creative-hotels/

Welcome to the Hotel Kanenwisher.  You can check any time you like but you can never leave.

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Beware the thief...

Source: 26.media.tumblr.com via Cheryl on Pinterest

This is why I don't feel like attending the Parade of Homes tour currently going on here in Dixie.

Decor and upgrading have not been a priority since we moved here a year and a half ago.

And now, it seems like such a waste to do so.

I was the girl who always had a home project going on or at least a plan. Who once thought she found joy in doing so.

After 18 months of shaking old habits and re-channeling my thoughts, I feel like I've come to a grateful phase of my life.

There's no need to re-kindle the old fire.

There is a peace and quiet joy when you become content with what you have.

Don't get me wrong...I would replace the stained carpets and dated tiles if I could.  But it's not a priority and certainly isn't something that I should be consuming my time and thoughts with right now.

I hope to never meet the thief of 'comparison' again.

Can I Get An Amen!

You know when you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night but you don't want to turn the light on because you don't want to wake up all the way?

And when you are finished with your bathroom business you reach over in the dark and the toilet paper roll is empty?

And lucky for you, you can reach over in the dark and replace it with another roll without turning on the light?

But then you spin the roll and you can't get it open?  The adhesive is too strong or you can't find the end?

So then you beat it to death for a few panicked seconds and curse the idiot who left you in this predicament?

And then you finally catch a piece only to have it shred in layers instead of unrolling the way it should?

By this point you are already wide awake so what was the point in leaving the light off because now you're going to have to turn it on any way?

Does this happen to anyone else?

Probably not.

And it me or is anyone else out there feeling pretty darn near hopeless about the state of our country?

Amen anyone?

Probably not.

Chocolate Snowstorms

My kind of snowstorm...chocolate.

These are the best cookies I've made in years.  No kidding.

I found them on a blog...sorry I don't remember where...it was an accident. And the gal didn't invent the recipe anyway.  She found it like me.

Let me suggest that you don't even taste the dough because then you may never even bake it up.  Yep, it's that good. Secondly...these things are irresistible while warm.  Cold...the next day, they are just normal good cookie.

1 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 stick butter, room temp
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cocoa powder
3/4 tsp soda
3/4 tsp salt
powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350º.
Beat sugar and butter.  Add egg and vanilla.  In a separate bowl mix all dry ingredients.  Add dry ingredients to batter and mix just until combined.  Chill dough for 30 minutes. (Seriously try to forget about it). Bake for 12-15 minutes.  (The recipe didn't say to, but I baked my cookies on parchment paper). Let cookies cool only slightly on sheet and then drop them into a bowl of powered sugar, cover them, brush off the excess and place them on a cooling rack.

Then eat them one right after the other.

A white out

A travelogue of a ordinary white out day....

The day started as many others have recently.

Hunter and I home alone.

I tried to wake up her up to enjoy some outdoor camaraderie.  But my efforts, as usual, were futile.

So I went to the white house, aka the Temple instead.

Was feeling a bit woeful about the fact that I was alone and had no one to do anything with when I ran into two members of my ward working in the temple.  It's good to feel familiarity and friendship just when you need it most.  Typically, I am a loner and have no problem functioning solitarily. Sometimes I just need a little reassurance that I'm not alone.

And there I heard the chandeliers tinkling, something I've heard the local natives talk about.

And then I decided to make an impromptu trip to Zion.

I had a few hours of daylight and thought I might try to hike Angel's Landing.

But then as I was approaching Walter's Wiggles...there was a dead baby deer in the path.  She had slipped on some ice from a cliff above and landed right on the trail.

And then Walter's Wiggles were icy.  And going up them was scary enough.  When I got to Angel's Landing it was covered in white as well so rather than take my chance with 1,000 foot vertical drops like the deer, I figured I'd scare myself enough just getting back down the Wiggles.  

Feeling unaccomplished, I thought I'd foray to the east side of the park and look for some Big Horned sheep.  Navigating through somewhat icy roads, I got a pay off.  I saw two baby sheep.

So, for a white out day....it wasn't a shut out.  

1. Got to go to THE white house.

2. Beat my personal best time...and everyone else I encountered on the trail to Scout's Overlook.

3.  Made it down safely.

4.  Enjoyed hiking without sweating or being too cold.  Perfect temps.

5.  Saw some of my favorite non-human species.

6.  Didn't allow myself to wallow in self-pity.

End of white out travelogue.

Taking Aim

I'm starting to feel the love of Valentines Day coming on.  I used be better about decorating the house up for this commercial holiday...for my girls. But in the last few years I've sort of lost the love for changing out holiday decor.

There are so many cute things on Pinterest though.  I get inspired.

So this year I'm aiming to make it Valentiney around here.

At least the front door.

The arrow idea was taken from Pinterest.  I decided I didn't want to chop at any of the already practically non-exsistent foliage in my yard and used bamboo rods that I use in my garden to make the arrows.

The wreath is just a ceiling medallion, spray painted bubblegum pink and touched with some metallic gold.

Hot glue the arrows on, tie on some old ribbon from the jar and you're good to go.

Good choice for the Retro House.

What project shall I take aim at next?

I think I better work on my Sunday School lesson.

Unqualified Happiness

I knew this morning as I was dropping off kids to school, that this would be a photographic day in Snow Canyon.  While the city was enshrouded in fog, I could tell that in the higher elevations the fog was lifting and above the mists was a bluer-than-blue sky.

I was still in my pj's, so I hurried home, changed and headed back out to see if my pocket-sized camera could do justice to what I might see.

It was still completely fogged in where I parked in the canyon.  As I was getting out of my car a hiking guide and his entourage were headed back to their van, having just spent two hours hiking in practical darkness. The man approached me and told me I was in for a disappointing hike.  The trails were wet and slippery and there was no visual bearing due to the heavy fog.  He thought it might be better if I tried again tomorrow.

I was pretty certain I'd seen blue sky earlier and wanted to be there when the grey burned off.  Off I went through the mists.  And only 30 minutes into my first part of the climb...it happened.  The mists lifted.

It was then I knew I was unqualified to be trying to capture what I was seeing.

Swirling clouds and droplets of mist all around me.  Pocket-sized, point-and -shoot camera is very inadequate.

Because of the damp air, the canyon smells incredible, unreal.

I wasn't out long...about an hour and a half.  By the end of my hike the clouds had almost completely lifted and the midday-harsh sun had obliterated the best light.  I kept thinking how unfortunate that the 5 or 6 van loads of people I saw leaving the canyon that morning had missed what I'd seen.  If they'd only come a couple of hours later...

Happiness today was found in an unscheduled, solo hike in the translucent canyon.

Why is this true?

Source: quickmeme.com via Cheryl on Pinterest

Source: someecards.com via Cheryl on Pinterest

Can someone explain to me why this is true?

If I watch one episode of Hoarders...I am up all night cleaning...thinking I'm a hoarder.

I thought this was just me, but Pinterest tells me otherwise.

I need to lay off watching Extreme Hoarders.

In Our Nation's Capital

I never got lost.  Despite DC's attempts at trying to confound, confuse and lose me, I prevailed.

Memories I never want to lose:
•Black suburban/van motorcades
•helicopter blades beating night and day
•a great melting pot of culture
•foodie heaven
•no lines
•enormity
•an underused temple and the workers who nearly cried at our being there
•daydreaming of Georgetown
•the smell of shoes of holocaust victims
•old stuff

I didn't take many pictures.  I don't need much.  Most of my memories will be the experiences...of smell, sights and sounds combined. And I decided that I since I am a very amateur photographer, the pocket size camera would do, and if I wanted better pictures, I could certainly buy them.  Since these things have been photographed literally millions of times before me...I only wanted the pictures that reflected things as I saw them.

The gift of travel = incomparable.

We spent the first day from sun-up to sun-down walking the National Mall beginning at the Lincoln Memorial, past the National Monument, through a couple of museums to the US Capital and the Library of Congress.

We experienced no lines.  No waiting.  And almost had the entire city to ourselves.  It was cold but sunny and we bundled up.

The last photos are of the "compass" stone, made of brass located in the crypt of the Capital.  It is the literal center of Washington DC, as all roads are measured and assigned from this spot.

The Library of Congress will indeed need to be explored again.  As with the Capital....truly spectacular.

And because it was on the way back to the hotel...we stopped by the White House.  It's current residents were at Disney World.

A sweet experience welcomed us at the Temple the following morning. I'm always surprised at how different a temple looks in real life compared to the images and photos I've seen for years.

There's so much to see in Old Town Alexandria, but oldness was my favorite part.

And to see Mt. Vernon is to feel George Washington and the kind of man he was.

And then it was time to go but not without cramming in one more museum visit and a drive by in the fresh snow...I mean ice.

That's it.  My entire photographic journey.
In our Nation's Capital, television is a priority--not a pastime, news is spontaneous and relevant, food is varied and flavorful, corruption and incorruption coincide, architecture is substantial and enduring and people live and breath the same way they do everywhere else.

Loved it.  Love our Nation's Capital.  I have a newly rediscovered appreciation and patriotism for our country.