Something to SMILE about...
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| Dinner with our camper on the night we brought her home |
With the pandemic in full force across the globe, we all need reminders of reasons to smile, each day as we go forward. And for me, this lil' camper makes me smile. I love painting because it instantly gives the object a fresh, and different look. I love change. I have never been one for decorations. I used to strive to be minimal in my material belongings.
With my first house, I would often re-paint walls in my house in order to decorate. I never really worried about going bold and painting my living room bright orange or my kitchen a sunflower yellow, because paint could always be easily changed if I didn't love the color. And color makes me smile. But 3 children later, and much less free time of my own.... time for repainting if the color isn't right, is not time I really can afford. So after much deliberation, I landed on a color combination that I thought would be classy and cute. As much as I wanted go bright and bold, I trusted the color combinations I was naturally drawn to of photos I found online.
So I found Whippy Cake Blog, which guided me through the process of prepping and painting our vintage camper. And thankfully, it turned out amazing! It always feels great when something you put your sweat and heart into, turns into something you love.
Within the first 2 weekends of owning it, we re-painted the exterior and tore out the existing bed set up. The previous couple had torn out the original dinette and raised the bed, so that their 2 great danes could sleep down below. Obviously our family of 5 needed something with a bit more sleeping room- squished into a 10 foot camper.
BEFORE-
RENOVATIONS-
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| Rebuilt and insulated the back wall |
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| New framing & insulation |
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| Involving the kids with the work |
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| Lower cabinets painted navy |
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| New walls & paint |
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| Dual benches for dinette |
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| Benches pull out to make a King Size bed |
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| Upper and lower cabinets painted/ Doors, drawers and hardware re-installed |
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Full size upper kids bunk (rebuilt to original design)
We are scheduled to depart on our Road Trip in about 3 months- pending whenever the Covid-19 Pandemic resolves, life returns to something more normal, and the National Parks re-open. We are pretty much done with the major work to be done on the camper. The lower bed cushions are complete, and the curtains are finished and hung (photos to come). We have intentions to install a lovely backsplash in the kitchenette. Then it will be time to fashion some sweet storage maximizing solutions.
We LOVE this little camper. It makes us smile. And we are looking forward to many beautiful memories that our family will make traveling with it. This road trip has been an idea for a few years. Waiting. Dreaming. Postponing. Pushing through to pay off our mortgage! Looking forward. And now we are mere months away from setting sail. In our minds, it seems like a lovely adventure. And this, it will be at times. But at other times, I am sure we will be asking ourselves why we thought this would be any fun at all. All of us packed into a 10 ft. by 6 ft box. And at those times, we will need to step back and look at that sweet paint job. And smile. Because at least we won't be tent camping, with three kids, across the country. This has to be better than that!
Find your something to SMILE about. Through the sweat and work of life, it's the trouble you've gone through that makes life even more beautiful and worth that SMILE. I am confident that this lil' camper wouldn't bring me as genuine a smile, had we simply bought it in perfect condition and ready to go. We needed to work for this. Our creativity needed to bubble over. It had to get messy before it became beautiful. And it did. It was worth it, even if there was no road trip to go on. It was the process. The learning. The BEAUTY of memories made and working together. Dreaming together. Having our vision become realized.
Smile.
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GEN FOLKSONGS- Lean On Me
Wow it's been some time since I posted to this BLOG... and we've entered new seasons and learned many new things since then. We have been homeschooling for a few years now, and our oldest is almost 7, in year one. We absolutely love the Ambleside Online the curriculum we have been using. It is based upon the Charlotte Mason method- google it if you have never heard of it. Once I discovered the method, I knew it was for us. After discovering the method, I found Ambleside Online and was so grateful because of the amazing guide it was for helping me to know what exactly to teach my children. Beyond the reading, writing, math and essentials, we have discovered a love for the Enrichments like Nature Study, Picture Study, Composer Study, Hymn study, and Folk Songs! There is a schedule for each, that ambleside uses, and you are free to follow of select your own. We are picking our own hymns each month, simply to learn and know the hymns that we sing in our fellowship and are familiar to us. As we need to, we will start following some of the selected hymns to learn some new ones. We generally follow the Composer & Artist study selections for each term because they choose 2 people who are from the same time in history, however this term I branched off chose Ansel Adams (picture study) in preparation for our Road Trip this summer. We will be visiting many of the US National Parks on our adventure. I have loved photography since high school, and am absolutely loving learning about Ansel Adams and becoming familiar with his photos of some of the parks we will visit. 
