Tag: work

Posted in Life

Before the Transformation

Posted on by Penny Wilson Writes

I haven’t been posting much or writing much lately.  I’ve been busy.  In my last post, I showed you a bedroom that I painted and redecorated.  Today, I want to show you a bit more detail BEFORE I start a transformation.

Above, is a photo looking into my home from the front door.  This hallway is what you see when you first walk through the door into my house.  The walls are an awful brown color that was used in many of the rooms of the house.

Notice that there is a doorway in the middle of the hall.  So it’s divided into 2 halves.  You’ll also see that the back hall has a curved ceiling.  It follows the roofline.  The front hall has 11.5 foot ceilings.  My goal is to repair some holes and dings in the walls (believe me, they are there) and to repaint.  

This is a closer look at the back hall.  You can get a better look at the curved beadboard ceiling.  I have that feature in a couple of rooms and I just love it.  

The walls are that terrible brown color in here and the same repairs need to be made to the walls.  The threshold transition between the front hallway and the back looks terrible.  I pulled up the dangerous trip-hazard threshold that was there and will be replacing it with something more suitable and less dangerous.  The floor in the back hall has linoleum and I laid an area rug on top of that. 

Here is another view of the back hall after I pulled up the rug and linoleum.  Ugly isn’t it?  I discovered that water had been getting in under the back door.  I think I’ve got that issue solved.  

So now you know what I’ve been doing with my time.  So far, I’ve pulled a ton of nails out of the walls and filled those holes.  I’ve taken off the switch plate and outlet covers and I’ve repaired some holes and cracks in the walls.  In the back hall, I filled in cracks in the ceiling.  

The past couple of days I’ve been repainting the crown molding, the doors, baseboards and other trim.  It’s meant a lot of ladder work and that just wears me out.  So it’s slow going. 

Today I’m going to Home Depot to look at doors.  I need to replace my bedroom door.  That in itself is another post. 

So if you don’t see me as much, this is why.  I’ll pop in once in a while, but not as often for a while. 

I hope that Spring has finally sprung for you!  Go forth and enjoy!

Thank you for joining me on this journey.  Penny   

 

Posted in Life, Stories, Uncategorized

Hardship for Mom

Posted on by Penny Wilson Writes

My mom was probably one of the most unusual people you would ever meet.  I’m sure a lot of people say that.  But let me just give you a sampling.

My mother is a complicated person to describe.  When I was a small child she had me believing in gnomes and fairies.  With her words, I could imagine a magical, beautiful world filled with wonder and enchantment.

My doll house did not have Barbie living in it, but elves.  The moving neon lights outside the stores at night were lit and powered by small beings (elves again?) inside that were throwing levers and turning knobs to make them move.  Every mushroom was an umbrella for a tiny fairy!

My mother could cook a gourmet meal over an open campfire and tuck us into bed that night snug and warm.  We may be living in a tent, but we felt safe and secure.  Mom made sure of that.

My mother raised 4 of us kids, mostly by herself.  She had no real education.  She graduated from high school and her chosen profession was waitressing.

My mother’s Picker was broke.  You know, the thing inside us that we use to “Pick” a mate.  Hers never did work right.  She married 5 times.  Badly.

We lived on commodities, pinto beans, peanut butter and pancakes.  One of my favorite meals to this day is fried potatoes, pinto beans and cornbread.  This was a meal we ate often.

With the wages my mother made, things were very tight.  There was NO extra money.  Mom would make light of it and we would have a pancake eating contest that night at dinner.  Because pancakes was all there was to eat.  If there was no money to buy bread, our school lunches would be a sandwich made on a homemade biscuit.

My mother would go hungry if it meant one of her kids could be fed.  There were times when she did just that.

One of my mother’s “Picks” was a man that picked fruit for a living.  So we followed the fruit.  Doing so meant that we would live where we could while traveling.  It might be a “picker’s cabin”, which was basically just a wooden structure to keep the rain off of you.  Or we might be living in a tent or sleeping on the ground.

If you ever want a real eye opener about this kind of lifestyle, you should watch the YouTube video called Harvest of Shame.   This was broadcast on Thanksgiving Day in 1960.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJTVF_dya7E

This video is about an hour long.  You will be amazed and horrified at how these people were treated.   There is one man in the video that made the comment “we used to buy slaves, now we just rent them”.  He was referring to the migrant workers.

In this documentary, they show mostly black people, but in the 1960’s, more than 80% of the migrant workers in the US were white.  White families just like mine.

Despite the hardships of day to day living, I had no idea that we were “poor”.  I was a happy kid.  I was loved and cared for.

Looking back, my mom is the one that had the hardship, not us kids.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.  Penny ❤

 

Posted in Life

DIY

Posted on by Penny Wilson Writes

car garden diy

I’m a DIY kind of girl. I’ve had to be. Most of my life, I could not afford to hire someone to do things for me, so I’ve always had the mindset of make do, figure it out on my own. DIY.  My mother, bless her heart, taught me to sew before I ever started Home Economics (I don’t think that still exists, does it?) in school. At about the age of 5, she sat me down and taught the art of hand embroidery. I was her shadow in the kitchen, learning to cook. Mom did well at preparing for me for as lot of things in life. Because of this, I’ve never been afraid to tackle something if I thought I could do it. Things didn’t always work out, but I tried. I do know my limitations, most of the time, and if it’s something out of my league, I leave the project to someone else.

I scour the internet and YouTube looking for instructions on how to do things all the time. I recently made my own bar soap. The kind made from lye, the real deal. It turned out lovely and I gifted some at Christmas time. I also tried homemade laundry soap, but I’m still perfecting the recipe. Not so sure about that one. I was taught a couple of very basic crochet stitches and have since taken to YouTube and have followed along teaching myself more.  I gift my crocheted projects all the time.

I’ve painted and laid tile. I added shelving in the kitchen, bathroom and garage. It seems as though I’m always tackling a do it yourself project. There is a lot of satisfaction that comes from doing it yourself. Being able to stand back and look at what you’ve accomplished.

The VW Bug above was pictured in a article about DIY gardening. While a lovely thought, I’m afraid that I would just end up with a rusting hulk in my yard. I know my limitations. 🙂

How about you?  Do you DIY?

Copyright (C) 2020 Penny Wilson

 

 

 

Posted in Life

Laying Low

Posted on by Penny Wilson Writes

My apologizes for being so quiet recently.  Most of you know that I have a day job, that I am not an independently wealthy blogger as some of you are. 🙂  Work has been brutal lately.  I’ve been going home pretty worn out.  So today, there will not be a Friday Favorites.  I’m sorry.

I’ll be back in the swing of things soon.

Stay strong, my friends.  Keep doing what you do.  Thank you for joining me on this journey.  ❤ Penny

Posted in Life

Fence Me In, Yes!

Posted on by Penny Wilson Writes

The Lovely picture above is my view from the deck in my back yard. I love my little house, but there were issues with the back yard.  There was NO privacy. A neighbor on one side of me has junk galore in his back yard and mows his yard 2 or 3 times a year, whether it needs it or not. 🙂  Then I have very nice neighbors behind me that just put in a swimming pool.  They have teen aged kids.  I know this will mean a lot of activity in their yard, which is completely exposed to my yard.  It was time.

Below are a couple of before and after pictures. I’m sorry the quality is so bad in the before shots.  But you can see that the fence has made a HUGE difference! There was a terrible, falling down, ancient, chain link fence in place.  The new fence just went right in front of the old one.

                                                                                                                   

For Christmas, my brother and sister in law gifted me this awesome hammock swing!!  See below.  I got this hung up on New Year’s Day.  Yes, me.  By myself. 🙂

I had been wanting a swing just like this for some time and I guess Santa told my brother that I wanted it.  I didn’t.  But this is what he got me for Christmas!

Here’s another shot of my swing on my back deck.  The swing is where I was sitting in my first picture of this post.  My back yard was in terrible shape when I moved in.  I’ve pulled hundreds of weeds.  ALL the grass was dead.  So it’s come a long way from where I started.  I need to stain the fence and the deck. So there is still a lot of work to do.  But my back yard is becoming my little sanctuary. I love spending time out here with my little dog, drinking coffee, writing, etc.  One the weekends, I take my bowl of cereal and my cup of coffee out there and enjoy my little slice of heaven.

My little homestead still needs lots of work. This last summer I had the attic insulated, I put a new floor in the bathroom, now a new fence.  Next?  Maybe new gutters.  I’m not sure.  Of course there is still TONS of painting that I need to do inside the house.  Slow but sure, I’m making this little gem shine! 🙂

Copyright (C) 2019 Penny Wilson

 

 

 

Posted in Life

Let’s Change EVERYTHING!

Posted on by Penny Wilson Writes

Although I love my little house, since buying it, I’ve realized that there are a lot of things that I want to change. Mostly…everything.  🙂  Most of the interior paint colors are very dark.  While dark colors can be chic, on cloudy days, I felt as though I was living in a cave.  😦  And the previous owners did a sloppy job of painting.

So the first room I wanted to tackle is the living room.  The picture above is the BEFORE picture.  Below is the AFTER.

Huge difference!  It really brightened up the space!

The room in the distance is my kitchen.  That will be the next room to paint.

The living room flows into a hallway that leads to the bathroom and bedrooms.  I had to decide how FAR I wanted to go with the painting.  Below is the hallway BEFORE.

The hallway goes down and then turns to the right toward 2 more bedrooms.  Below is the AFTER picture.

I decided to go just as far as the first bedroom before the hall made that right turn.  I figured that was a good place to stop.

Every room needs to be repainted.  Seriously.  EVERY room.  I hate the flooring in the kitchen and bathroom.  It’s way too dark.  Almost black.  The bathroom walls all need to be resurfaced.  So that whole room needs an update.

That’s what I meant about changing Everything!

There is still a LOT more to do.  But I sure feel good about what I’ve done so far.

Thank you for joining me on this journey! ❤

Posted in Life

Back to Reality

Posted on by Penny Wilson Writes

I’ve been back at work for just a couple of days now.  The time off was good for me.  I didn’t realize how much I actually needed the time away.  I feel refreshed and can look at things at the office with a clear head.

It will take me a little while to get back into the swing of things.  I sort of feel like I need to be retrained!  I haven’t taken this much time away from work in a Long time!  But the pieces are falling into place.

I’m still adjusting to the new house with my morning routine.  I haven’t quite got that down yet.  My travel time to work is just a little longer.  (so worth it!) So I need to get that figured out.

While I was off work, my mind has been percolating on a couple of story ideas.  So I am itching to sit down and really dig into these plots!  Soon!!

You should be seeing a bit more of me here now.  I’ve just about caught my breath. I miss you guys!

Thank you for joining me on this journey!  Penny ❤

Posted in Life

A Good Tired

Posted on by Penny Wilson Writes

Have you ever heard someone say that they were tired, but it was a Good Tired?  That’s how I feel.  I’m getting settled in my new home and I am loving it!  Although there is still a lot to do, I’m making good progress.  I go to bed Very Tired at night and sleep like the dead.  🙂  But it is a Very happy and satisfied tired.

I’m glad that I’ve taken some time off to get settled.  By the time I go back to work, I won’t be done, but I’ll have made a good dent in things.

My writing has taken a back seat for the time being.  But I will be back and posting again soon.

I am looking forward to creating my little writing/office oasis.  I’ve not had a real designated place to write so designing this space is going to be fun.

Thank you for joining me on this journey!  Penny  ❤

Posted in Life

Getting Ready to Get Ready….

Posted on by Penny Wilson Writes

I’m sorry that I haven’t posted in a while.  Between getting the new location ready, work and packing and organizing things for the move, I am just bone tired.  I know it will all be worth it, but I’m wore down to a nub.  🙂  My move date is the 14th, so this will be my last weekend to finish ALL of the packing.

I’ve got piles of mess everywhere, in preparation for the move.  I have looked for something that is already packed a few times.  So everything is pretty much in chaos.  Stressful for me to have my life so disorganized.

I’m not sleeping very well either.  My brain just won’t shut down.  I keep thinking about everything that still needs to be done!

I will get back to a regular posting schedule eventually, but it’s going to be a few weeks.  I will continue to peek in when I can, I miss you guys!

Thanks for joining me on this journey!  Penny ❤