curtains and youtube

I've always been strange so I can't entirely blame my pension for using every last ounce of an item and having very little interest in aesthetics on Guatemala but I do. Years ago I went to Guatemala and helped out at feeding programs and built small homes for widows up in the mountains. I took four separate trips for such endeavors but after the first trip I came home changed. The second and third and fourth trip just helped to solidify my resolve. This is all said in preface of yesterday's win.

My husband and I purchased his grandparent's home years ago. I've mentioned before that we live in the house that my mother in law grew up in, the house her father had built for their family. Well it just so happens that we have the same curtains she grew up with as well. Now, in my defense they are very thick, well made, light blocking (you couldn't buy the same quality in a store these days for anything) and for the most part I do like them. Our curtains in the living room and bedrooms are genuinely antique. The front curtain however began falling apart a long time ago. A combination of age, time, and my very young son continually pulling at it when peeking out the front window a hundred times a day had begun to demolish it. I was reluctant to replace it because I didn't want to spend the money, because I don't like shopping, because I knew I'd have to replace not only the curtain but the hardware (since the pully system that the curtain rolled on was breaking as well).

In January I ended up getting some robins egg blue curtains on deep clearance. But I hung them up on the old rod that they didn't quite fit on and that was very broken (there may have been some duct tape involved with this procedure). In wrapping up a very long, rather uninteresting story, the first set of new curtain's I've ever purchased have been displayed in front of our large living room window for the past four months on an old broken rod (eh hem, with duct tape helping the rod to not fall down). Yesterday's WIN was purchasing a new rod (on sale, yay) AND putting it up. It's nothing fancy shmancy but it's a job much needed and well done. That's a very big win for me.

Oddly, the FAIL for the day is related to the spice so I think that makes it a half fail and not a complete fail. I spent way too much time at the computer. My baby girl took a very long second nap while my son and husband were gone and I didn't do anything productive, well, I think I was productive but not in a very responsible way. Onto the spice!

Abe has been begging me for months to let him do LEGO videos on youtube. He has a lot of Legos. He gets them as gifts. He spends his allowance on them. He spends gift money on them. There are a few channels on youtube that we let him watch so obviously he's been wanting to get in on the fun. Last week we posted his first video and he was thrilled. Only yesterday I started experimenting with video editing. I learned a lot and spent some VERY RARE mommy alone time in front of the computer having a ton of fun. I learned how to add an image over a video (and how to add background music or sound overlay even though I didn't add any to his video). I was able to edit his video from yesterday with four different images placed in the upper left hand corner throughout and I'm very proud of the newly learned skill. I think it's pretty safe to say that new knowledge and increased skill is a wonderful kind of SPICE.

an older picture of a happy us