Our Sad Little Trailer, the Grand Tour

I’m not gonna lie. I’m overwhelmed with this particular project. This is one of those times I would like to have a sibling, or two, or three… the kind of relationship with a person where you can call them up and say “Hey… I have this sad little trailer and all these lofty ideals for it… can you come over and help me?” I tried to get the kids involved, let’s just say they’d rather be playing in it than priming it. *boo hoo* It would appear the attention span for painting and priming is around the length of a vine video. (Insert mom eye roll)

The ELECTRIC blue has got to go! Seeing our kids playing in our trailer gives me mixed emotions. Looking under, over, and through this trailer I have found dirt, insect remnants and rodent droppings. This is not my favorite kind of job. If you would have asked me as a teenager what my favorite car was I would have told you the truth… a limousine. This project is FAR from limo worthy. #nottooproudtowork

There is BLUE OVER-SPRAY ON THE GLASS WINDOW. smh… what am I doing?

The tour continues into the kitchen, with the oven. I have no idea how this could even stay. While it was working when we first bought the trailer… I don’t know if I can ever clean it up to Pinterest status.

Pinterest is absolute torture. I have no idea why I even have a Pinterest board (https://www.pinterest.com/wholeheartart/the-happy-little-camper/) except for the fact that I am helplessly addicted to finding cute and adorable inspirations that haunt my dreams and make me feel absolutely awful… remind me again why I pin? Oh yeah! It’s FUN!

I would like to replace the kitchen counter with butcher block, that way it could act as a cutting board along with a counter top and serve a dual purpose in the small space. I am also considering a smaller sink. I like the round sinks from Ikea, although 8 of us will be camping together most times.

What on earth am I going to do with these drawers? WHY on earth do they have plastic edges?

Let’s not even discuss this picture. “A sandwich is a sandwich… but that’s a MEAL!” – Sinbad, from the movie Houseguest.

I DO love this back window and sink. It has the original charm that led me to want this little trailer.
THE FRIDGE WAS SPRAY PAINTED BLUE!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH   My daughter looks how I feel right about now.  

I have learned over time that when a project is midway there is always chaos and disaster. It is as if we are attempting to win a war against ourselves. Life would be easy with an unlimited budget, of course. To be able to say “Do this – Do that.” To someone else.

However, there is this odd sense of accomplishment that seems to happen when you look at the bottom of a barrel of paint, or go to bed exhausted and layered in primer. I have NO IDEA how long this particular project is going to take. I have NO IDEA how I am going to be able to accomplish it, and I have NO IDEA how I am going to convince my children to give me more than 20 minutes of their time (willingly)… YET.  Perhaps tomorrow we will band together, sing “Cumbaya” grab some paint brushes, blink our eyes and the trailer will be finished… here’s hoping. 😛  (Signed – One Exhausted Momma)

P.S. I DID vacuum all the nastiness up… the kids are safe 😉

World… Meet “Betty”

CAPTIAN JACK SPARROW

Before I get started on this particular blog, and introduce you to our future “Happy Little Camper”, allow me to explain how our family works… we name our cars. ALL of our cars, it is as if unless we name them they aren’t apart of our family. Can cars be family members? I think so… our truck (the one which will be pulling our soon to be Happy Little Camper) it’s name is Captain Jack Sparrow.

His predecessor was “The Black Pearl”, while our second family car (the minivan) is named “Will Turner”. Our third car (which doesn’t run due to failing a smog check -or two- and is more like a ‘one-day-wouldn’t-it-be-great-if-we-could-fix-this-car’ cars name is Maximillion.

So, it was only natural we would name our new car/trailer/home on wheels ‘Elizabeth Swan’ because of her Ugly Duckling nature, and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. We call her “Betty”. The funniest thing about all of this Pirate talk, is we aren’t even Piratey type people… except that one time…

Explanation? Um… it was a birthday party, and my husband has always dreamed of becoming Magnum P.I., LOL.

Here is Captain Jack and his new hitch ready to pull our new travel trailer. On Monday we took a family drive out to Lodi, California which is near Sacramento.

While there, we meet up with a rather interesting character (I’ll call him BOB) who had been traveling with the Grateful Dead for the last 5 years. Now it has always been my intention to turn our finding of The Happy Little Camper into a children’s story… our story has just taken quite the odd turn.

In my imagination The Happy Little Camper had a start like this… “Once upon a time down a long and crooked dirty road sat a very sad and lonely little camper.”

Strawberries were administered to our two year old on our drive out to pick up Elizabeth. As was my laptop and the Cars movie on loop.

Jerry Seinfeld should come up with “Kids Watching Cars in Cars” as his next YouTube project. (Side-note if you have never watched Jerry’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on YouTube you must!)

These two have “trouble” written all over their faces.

Here is what I have for our story so far…

“Not too far away, where the almond trees grow and the sun shines hot on the California dirt, there lived a sad and bent up little trailer.”

“A nice man had owned her, and he loved her very much. He tried as best as he could to fix her up. He painted her with bright blue paint (?) and had dreams of painting her roof bright red – for he was a Patriot.”

“Unfortunately though, he couldn’t keep her. His bills had gotten too high and his pockets had run too dry. He had a growing family of his own to think about, and while this made the little camper even more sad, soon a new family came to look inside her and see if they could help her.”

“The families youngest son checked out her old dirty stove and questioned his mother. The little trailer was embarrassed.”

“The families second to youngest son touched her flooring and saw it was like the flooring they had at home, and this excited the sad and dented little trailer.”

“The third son who was along for the ride began to see past the sad little trailers dented and beat up facade. He scratched his head while standing in her and said… ‘You know, this trailer is pretty all right. With a little bit of paint and some hard work, she will one day be the greatest!'”

“‘WE LOVE HER!’ The children shouted with joy instead of running away in fright. Elizabeth will be her name they agreed, and then they planned on sleeping in her that very night!”

The End… for now.

Next blog… mom gets to start taking stuff apart. *sigh*

The Start of a Vision…

This is our “baby” who was looking quite adorable today waking up from his nap as we set out to look at our loving “Uncle Vince’s” property.

DO WE LAND?

Do we “land” a travel trailer… or do we plan on seeing AMERICA? That really is the question of the hour. I mean right now, my son sits next to me on our second computer watching Minecraft videos. I don’t blame him he just got off work at 11:30pm… and he is only 17. If we are going to “go all in” and live out of a trailer for a year (or two) I don’t know if I would like to ‘stay’ anywhere at all… especially with this type of view in sight…

This beautiful road  wove in and out of the California countryside like a fat and lazy rattlesnake. Our son when he saw it immediately stated how he wanted to go down it on his long board… how it was “calling to him”. Too bad we didn’t have it with us… and a helmet… and full on body wear… and a police escort LOL.

We stopped at the “Red Shack” by the reservoir straight across from the property and had sno-cones. It was 100 outside and this was the only stop before you got back into town. There are no filters on any of these pictures. This was a picturesque California day.

All in all it was a great day as a part of the ongoing #huntforthehappylittlecamper saga. I even found one locally that looks JUST LIKE OUR LOGO… it was absolutely perfect, until we heard back from the guy selling it… IT WAS SOLD! Look at how perfect… it could have been… *SIGH*

However… it would be just like God to orchestrate what we think we want into what we really need. That same gentlemen is selling another travel trailer, a slightly larger more refurbished one which he wants to sell to us at a great discount if he can sell to us directly and by-pass the lot he usually sells to. We get to see it Monday… and I am SO EXCITED 🙂

As far as a “permanent” location, or a “mobile” one… I haven’t decided. The fact our kids are needing to “check out” after working all day at 17… could be an indicator it is time for all of us to check out.

I Found What I Want…

This is so adorable. It looks rather big… but that’s not bad right? I can see an air conditioner, which is really good. I wonder what our neighbors would think? I think it is bigger than the house we are currently renting LOL.