Filling My Time

There are many days when the time creeps by slowly and I have little to do.  I try to fill my time, but sometimes feel unmotivated by the lack of routine or consequences for not doing something.  In my working life, I had to deal with answering to supervisors and, more importantly, being prepared to greet and teach dozens of small smiling faces each day in the classroom.  I had no other choice but to keep up with my work and that made time fly.

I've posted before that I occasionally feel a sense of uselessness and laziness, which often leads to guilt since I know Bob is out there working very  hard to keep our finances sturdy.  I often feel that I don't give enough back.  He assures me that being the sole breadwinner doesn't bother him, but, at this point, my guilt sometimes takes over.  Being a stay-at-home mom is a job (one of the hardest jobs in the world, I might add) and it's the job that I wanted so badly to take on, but now that has been put on hold and I've been searching for something to fill my time and maybe, just maybe, quell some of the guilt.

I've always enjoyed baking and I like to be able to present something tangible (and yummy) to Bob after my work.

Cinnamon Bread

A Birthday Cake For My Dad

Superbowl Cream-Filled Cupcakes (Thanks to my father-in-law for the one with the jockstrap piped onto it!)

I've also been working on slowly doing some renovations in the house.  In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that I was working on redoing our downstairs half bath due to the annoyingly bright and shiny blue paint that we inherited from the previous owners.  I've searched high and low for pictures of the before.  (I know we took them when we first looked at the house, but I can't find them anywhere.)  Here I have some pictures from during the process.

If you look closely at the pictures with the primer, you can see the bright blue shining through.  I might also add that we removed two Gothic-looking candle sconces which had a propensity to flip upside down, two floating white cottage-style shelves that might have fallen off the wall if you so much as breathed on them too hard, and an art-decoish mirror.  This bathroom definitely had an identity crisis!

Here's some pictures of the after.  We are still lacking artwork on the walls,  but we got a pretty new mirror and I love the paint color! (Unfortunately, this room does not photograph well because it's tiny and there zero natural light.)

Our next project:  the kitchen.  We'll be putting in a tile backsplash, adding under-cabinet lighting, and painting.

Filling my time and feeling useful aren't easy tasks at this point, but hopefully soon there will be a time when I think back to this point in my life and imagine what it would be like to have a little free time on my hands.