by Wendy Scheel | Dec 20, 2016 | Life
If you don’t believe in Christmas miracles, this story just might change your mind.
We left our daughter’s house in Grand Forks, North Dakota on Sunday morning. After driving for two hours, we dropped our son Jack at his house in Detroit Lakes Minnesota. And from there we had another three hours to go before arriving home.
Thirty minutes into the drive….I needed to stop and use a restroom, so we pulled into a Casey’s General Store. I asked Wade to go in with me only because I always feel bad when I go into a store with the sole purpose of using the restroom and don’t buy anything. I asked Wade to grab me a water and some Hot Tamales candy along with whatever he was getting.
I proceeded to use the resting room, joined Wade to pay for our items and jumped back into the car to continue our drive.
After a very uneventful two and a half hours, we arrived home and proceeded to unload the car. Presents, suitcases and odds and ends were all brought inside.
But……I couldn’t find my purse anywhere. I instantly panicked, ripped the car apart hoping I had missed it and then started wracking my brain where I could have left it. We had gone into Jack’s house when we dropped him off so I frantically called him to see if it was still there.
No purse.
And then I remembered.
I thought I had been so brilliant by hanging my purse on the large door hinge which kept it off the bathroom floor. So brilliant in fact that after washing my hands, I walked out of the bathroom without my purse!
My purse that holds my world. Not only was my billfold with all forms of identity in there, several credit cards and a little cash, but my beloved little Louis Vuitton satchel that Wade surprised me with over twenty years ago.
Thankful for a fast internet, I called the New York Mills Casey’s store within two seconds and blurted out my story. The wonderful young lady that answered replied that they had been trying to find me! They had searched Facebook and even called the police to help. I thanked her over and over and over and told her that our son Jack would be there soon to pick it up.
Once Jack had picked up my purse, I had him check to make sure everything was in there. The twenty or so dollars were in the cash part of my billfold along with all of my credit cards and drivers license.
And then I held my breath until he told me that my beloved little Louis was still there.
A Christmas Miracle. 🙂
And now, here are some other chair before and afters for you. Two miracle makeovers and two not so miraculous makeovers.
I found this adorable chair at an Estate Sale. It was nice and sturdy, but the insides were junk. 🙁 So it became adorable firewood.
One of these chairs sits in my loft area, and the other I use in the loft bedroom. Since they were no longer a couple, I decided to make a slip cover for the bedroom chair.
It’s safe to say that I failed miserably at this DIY. I lovingly called this the Pocahontas chair makeover.
These final two before and afters were successes. This rocking chair, I keep in our bedroom. I tried to sell it once, but put too high of a price on it. My subconscious didn’t really want to get rid of it.
And believe it or not, this is the same chair and was used for years in Samantha’s first apartment.
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of Before and After.
~Wendy
by Wendy Scheel | Dec 18, 2016 | Life
This past weekend created the perfect segue for todays before and after. If you didn’t catch my Instagram posts, let me quickly fill you in.
I took a picture of the sunrise from my phone so it’s really pixely on here, sorry.
Anyway, this massive ball of fire rising from the east did nothing to help with warming up the temperature of -20 degrees. And throwing in the wind chill factor…the temperature felt like -32 degrees.
Dressing in layers and running as fast as you can from indoors to a warmed-up car is the only way to survive those negatives.
Ready for the segue?
And speaking of dressing, here are todays before and afters of the dressers I have worked on over the past year.
There you have it, three warm layers of dressers. 🙂
~Wendy
by Wendy Scheel | Dec 16, 2016 | Life
Today’s before and after is brought to you by The Weather Station of Minnesota.
Not really. 🙂
I am currently sitting at our daughter and future son-in-laws house in North Dakota. It is FREEEZZZING here. Freezing is defined as a current temperature of 1 degree. That is also the current heat wave because the high tomorrow is -10.
The high people!
The high means that it will never get warmer than -10. Oh my goodness. The sad part about that is that we left our house in Minnesota early this morning to avoid a forecasted 6-10 inch snow storm. Six of One, half a dozen of the other.
So this question always comes up this time of year.
Why do we live here?
The answer is, we live here for the before:
And we dress up warm during the after:
Four months and counting to get back to that before. 🙂
I hope your weekend is warm,
~Wendy
by Wendy Scheel | Dec 14, 2016 | Life
One of the first blogs I’ve ever read and look forward to reading every day is BetterAfter.net Lindsey is the brilliant woman behind this blog of photos and from her own words, this is what her blog is all about.
What is this blog all about? Better After is a great big compilation of the very best before and after projects out there in the webosphere. It’s very simple. Before and After. No fifteen-paragraph tutorials to wade through, no endless scrolling through every nut, bolt and angle of the project, just a before and an after, and a link to find out more. Ok, and a little bit of me adding my two cents. Can’t help myself.
I’ve noticed a trend in my own blog. The greatest response I get to any blog post is when I post the final reveal of a project.
So for the rest of this year, I am going to post only the before and after pictures from past projects and maybe throw in a couple of new before and afters in there for good measure.
Today is the before and after from one of my very first posts and probably the only human and best before and after post this blog will ever have. 😉
Remember Alyssa? My gracious, tiny boned, zero percent body fat, athletic friend Alyssa? Here is a photo of her 10 and a half months pregnant.
And here is the red-haired, spirited, loving baby Liam after.
More before and after photos coming your way on Saturday.
~Wendy
by Wendy Scheel | Nov 21, 2016 | Life
I laid in bed all day yesterday. I have a stupid cold and it got the best of me, so I decided to take the day off. I watched the Vikings win, took several little naps and got a great night’s sleep.
Today, I am feeling much better.
While I was doing a much-needed nothing, Wade was out and about buying things off of Craigslist. He loves Craigslist. He’ll come home and say, “Look what I won from Craigslist!”
Really, you “won” something? I guess he is a glass-half-full kinda guy. 🙂
Wade won a workbench for my shop yesterday. I have really started to expand my woodworking skills and with the proper tools, a new workbench included, I am on my way to drawing up plans and making some cool stuff.
We needed the workbench for our new miter saw. Our old miter saw worked fine, but this new one has more bells and whistles.
The bench is in place, the saw is set and now it’s time to get to work. One of the things I want to get working on is this dresser.
It is going to be black with a dark stained top. My plans are to finish it as an entryway cupboard, similar to this dresser I made for our neighbor.
Then there is this small table that could be used as a side table, end table, a stand with a cute lamp or a place to display your Christmas tree and decorations.
Both of these items will be for sale on Craigslist when they are finished. Hopefully there is a glass-half-full person out there that wants to ‘win’ some furniture.
~Wendy
by Wendy Scheel | Nov 7, 2016 | Life
On the same day that Facebook showed me a 3-year-old picture of the snowfall in my front yard, Sam and I wore short sleeves in 73 degree weather during a full day of wedding planning.
Weird Minnesota weather, but I’ll take it.
Sam came home for the weekend because her wedding venue was hosting a Wedding Expo and she had her first wedding dress fitting. We went to the Wedding Expo first. There are 4 caterers that work exclusively with the Plymouth Creek Center (where Sam is having her wedding), and all of them were at the expo.
Picking a caterer was a major to do on Sam’s list, so we chatted with each one of them.
Of course, we she had done her research ahead of time and knew what questions to ask. This made the process that much easier, and the obvious choice was RP Catering by Roasted Pear. She now has a tasting scheduled in the middle of December.
Another thing this bride-to-be can check off of her to-do list.
Across the hall in the Plymouth Room, where the reception will be held, there were all kinds of vendors set up.
(99% of my pictures are blurry. An emotional, teary-eyed mother of the bride should never be the photographer. I apologize. Look past the blurry).
Everyone from licensed bakers, to florists, hotels and photographers were there. Again, Sam has a lot of the dirty work already done, so we didn’t need to stop at the photography booth, the DJ booth or a florist’s booth (ok we have a picture at the florist booth because we were too Minnesota nice to walk past them and their pretty flowers).
What stopped us in our tracks was a table of desserts.
Sam and Justin aren’t big cake lovers, so they were thinking more of a modern dessert bar instead. That was until we met Ashley from Silver Lily Sweetery. Her frosting was out of this world. I tried everything on her table.
EVERYTHING.
Besides the several different kinds cookies she had two flavors of cupcakes. I tried both kinds…well actually I tried the vanilla cupcake, then only licked the frosting off the chocolate ones! Hehe
As helpful as the expo was, it was also a little overwhelming not to mention calorie filled, so we took some time to walk around the garden where the ceremony will be.
We were enjoying the warm and sunny weather so much that time slipped away from us and it was time to head to the wedding dress fitting. We didn’t know quite what to expect because the Wedding Shoppe, Inc. doesn’t do alterations. Turns out, the dress fitting was exactly that. A time to try on the dress and make sure it “fit” meaning the right size was ordered. Her dress was ordered in the right size, but will need a few minor alterations later.
Without further ado, here is the dress!
Just kidding. You didn’t really think we would show you did you? 🙂
On top of a productive weekend wedding-wise, we also got a lot done on the guest bedroom. I will share updates later this week!
~Wendy
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