Who I am

Who I am ~

My name is Melissa. I am a child of God. Wife to Redneck. Mother of the Rhyne Brine.

I am a dreamer. I am a planner. I am creative. I am an optimist. 

I am a support personality. I am a pusher. Not a push you out of my way, but a push you towards YOUR goal.

I am a bows(wo)man.  Shooting my fire arrows to light the world on fire. Psalms 127:3-5My children are why I am here, to teach them and support them.  They are my biggest blessing.

I love what Redneck and I have been through together, now we are strong. Built on the ROCK

I am a giver, learned from my mother.

I am simple, don't try to figure me out. There is nothing to figure out. I like you, I want to help you and am here for you. OR I don't like you much because of your negativity or narcissism. But I am learning to love all.

I love living small, it's the new big.

Where I live ~

Outskirts of Seattle, in Cow Town. We just bought our first family house.  It's 920 sq ft of bliss. It is PERFECT. We are 0.8 miles away from my parents, can walk to town for ice cream or coffee.  We have awesome neighbors. 

What I love about my home ~

That its ours.  We were in negotiations for this house for 4 months, it almost feel through about 5 times) but everytime something came up, inspector issue, loan processing, etc. GOD CAME THROUGH.

It was build in 1916, needs a lot of work. My family was "if-y" about the house, didn't outright say it but you could tell. With everything that kept coming up, they seemed to want us to back out.  But the more things that came up, the more I felt that this house was God's, and He wanted us to have it. Every family needs an embassy. My family is going to do great things and we needed a home.  I feel like our family is a threat to Satan and he tried everything to make sure we couldn't get this house.  But God just laughed and the impossible became possible.


I love that my architecture background is turning this house into our home. I love being able to make a warm, functional home for my family who homeschool and work from  home. 

My favorite room is ~

 The master bedroom.

Although by the time I get to spend time here, I am 3 seconds away from unconsciousness, I love how serene it feels. I love the built in night stands and my daughters built in co-sleeper that I built.

My favorite thing to do DIY wise is ~

I wish I could chose a favorite, but I love it all. I love painting, walls, murals, plaques, anything. I love building something from nothing. I love demolishing. I love reorganizing.

I wish I knew how to ~

CODE.  Like build computer applications.

Then I could speak to my Redneck and actually understand what he's talking about 95% of the time. He is a genius. I am serious.  It runs in his family.  There has been a genius in every generation of the Richardsons (his mother's maiden name) as far back as they can remember.

I am not the book smart, I am terrible at memorizing anything.  But I was smart enough to snag my Redneck before anyone else did.   And that is my genius, I love creating something when most people would see nothing.  When we were dating, Redneck thought it would be awesome to be a barista, really!  But I quickly smothered that dream and shoved him a whole 'nother direction, where he should have been going in the first place. CHASING BIG Dreams.

Sometimes I wish I knew how to settle. I see other people coasting through life, just fine, no real obstacles.  But I can't. I don't know how.  I have to keep pushing towards the impossible, overcoming things that make me more reliant on God than every before. He has never failed me and never will.
Never mind... I don't wish I knew how to settle, it would be a waste of a brain and a purpose.  I am a rhino, even if you tried to paint spots on me, I could never be a cow. I have to charge, I can't sit around and be happy munching on grass.  Please read Rhinoceros Success. One of my favorite books.

Something you may not know about me is ~

My family was in a cult when I was in high school.  I ran away to my aunt and was without my family for 2 years. And during that time, I met my Redneck.  Don't you just love how God makes all things work together for good? I do. 


Because of Redneck, I got into my dream college,  University of Washington and rowed crew. (I'm second from the front, if you couldn't tell. Well, third from the front if you count the coxswain)

Then we eloped and got married in Hawaii.

Why I love to blog ~

I love to journal, helps me think. I love to look back on life.  And I just don't have the space to scrapbook anymore, so this is working just fine.

This post was inspired my Funky Junk Interiors and I am linking to the party!

New Laundry / Kitchen Door

Nothing like a new purchase to kick your butt into gear to get things moving.  I had received this door for free when I picked up the huge slider in the laundry room.  Solid wood, no osb and heavy as they come.  But it was about 2" too side and 6" too tall.  I have been procrastinating cutting it down to size and had it stored back in the gap between the cabinet and wall.  Well, since I needed to rip out that cabinet to tall our new dinette, I  had nowhere to store it, so I got my boooty in gear.

And the ugly before.  Pretty sure they just cut that hole in the door and stuck in some plexi glass... EWWW!! Sorry for the different angle. Now that there is a huge window, you can see the ugly furnace from this angle, I need to do something about that.
PS. Can you see a peek of our new (to us) restaurant dinette set (in the first photo)?  I should be done patching the walls for the reveal next week.

Top 2 Tuesday

I've never really done this but it looks like fun. I'm  linking up with The Undomestic Momma for top 2 songs!

I must say I am a HUGE country fan, couldn't guess that could you?? LOL.

1. Front Porch Looking In : by Lonestar
All about the beauty of what's inside the house

2.  Anyway : by Martina McBride
This is about following your dreams, even if they may never come true. I just love Martina, she has so many great songs!! 

Most country fans will know these songs. If you don't, you need to.

Kids and Togetherness

 It's no secret that I want at least one more baby.  And for some reason, I am in love with the idea of them all sharing a room.  I want them to be BEST friends, I never want them to have their own room, at least share with their same gendered sibling.

 I never in my life want to hear "Get out of MY room". It is their room, "our" room.

Ok, the bedding in the last picture is REALLY bad, but I love the layout!!

Ok, maybe when they are tWeenagers I'll let them have a girl room and boy room, LOL.  They can all sleep in one place (of course change clothes in the bathroom), and homeschool together in another room.  I think it will be alot easier to keep clean without school supplies scattered about, and putting away laundry.

Being a part of this Rhyne Brine is a team sport, the better  you know your team mates, the more games you will win.  I want them to be together, to whisper to each other at night about whatever is on their minds, to all learn in the same room, the older to help the younger ones.  This is my dream!!

Presentation, presentation, presentation

My mom always taught me: Food tastes better when it is well presented.  As I am receiving more and more orders for paint jobs from my ETSY STORE, I thought it was time to bring it to a new level..

So I've been upping my game as far as my mail order paintings are concerned.

So I painted the crown at the top and wrapped it in a pretty ribbon.  What do you think?

I thought it would be a nice present to be waiting on your front porch!!

12 hour Office Redo

 
So Redneck (I call him that because his head is buried in the computer so much, that is all I ever see of him) got flown out to San Diego to meet with a head haucho about the computer application he's building.  We (me and 3 very tired lil' babes) had him  at the airport at 7:30am and he would be home at 10:00pm that same day.  So that gave me from 9am to 9 pm to work on his office.  So I called in the reinforcements, my awesome mother and father in law. They drove an hour (one way) to come help me paint and watch the kids.  What a life saver!!

Stephen works from home, which I love and so does he. I just always feel so bad that his office has never been touched with a paintbrush, especially when he spends so much time in it.

And I sort of expanded my "storage area" to the  back corner of his office.

It was about time to shove it all into the attic space.  One thing I love about old houses, they utilize every bit of space possible.

And the worst part, the window / window trim.  So bad, no caulk, too thin, puke!
So without further ad-due..

We gave it a nice grey blue color and built new window trim.  You may reconize the oar above the window that I carved for him for Father's Day. You can read about that post HERE.

Put up a drawing Redneck's late grandfather drew (who was also an architect).

And packed away all the boxes of cords and books. Put up a drawing from 2004, I did my sophomore year at UW for architecture school.

Fridge loaded with ice coffees.

But most importantly, the new window trim. He stares out this window all day, ok, not really all day, probably a glance here and there when he is thinking about a new coding string, but still.

I had 12 hours. And ZERO money (leftover paint and molding)... So I think it turned out pretty good.
(Still needs bookshelves and a new desk, but for for new, it'll do til we can build his outdoor office)

Office Dreams

I've been thinking a lot about hubby's office lately. It's disguising. Poor guy!

I wish he had a nice area to work in, working from home and all, I want to make it as awesome as possible. Hopefully next summer we'll have THIS built for him in the backyard.

Fingers crossed!

Drip drip drip

When we moved in to our 1916 home, the kitchen faucet dripped, and dripped. We wrapped rubber bands around the handle to the spout to try to keep it from dripping, nothing worked.

Redneck was getting quite annoyed as I replaced the back slider, and built a front porch but didn't replace the faucet. 

Truth be told, I want an AWESOME faucet, don't know exactly which one yet, but know I definitely don't have money for it and don't want to pay for one I don't particularly like.
I've been stalking FREE craigslist as always, and finally was quick enough to snag this one.

I know, it's not super cool but it works and does NOT drip.

It even came with an awesome sink but I decided I didn't want and am trying to give away on CL, dang no-show people. ERG.

Anyone in the Seattle area want a cast iron sink?