I've got an itch

I have had awful poison ivy for the past couple of weeks. Two little dots showed up the day before Grant's birthday and they continued to expand and show up in other places for days. By the end of it, I had a rash covering most of the inside of my right forearm. My right thigh was almost covered completely, and I had spots all over my left arm and leg. Once the first areas began to ooze and heal, it was a seemingly non-stop process of the next area oozing and the next and the next. It was relentless. Tuesday is the first day in over two weeks that I wasn't itchy somewhere. It is so nice! (I should probably go knock on wood now.)

I have never had poison ivy before, and I must say that I will be very careful from now on! It is not something that I'd like to repeat. But I survived. And got a kick out of some of the crazy things that people suggest to decrease the symptoms or promote healing. These were things I found online:  pouring bleach on it, scrubbing it in the shower until it bleeds, using household cleaners.

I tried many things that seemed more safe, and nothing seemed to help except for Oral Ivy. They are drops that you put in a little water and take up to every two hours. It worked well enough that I was able to tell it if was getting close to two hours because I would start itching again. It wasn't a perfect remedy, but it got me through.

Almost healed poison ivy on my right leg. It doesn't itch, but it still looks awful!

I'm not going to post any other pictures of my poison ivy, because I didn't take any. It was just too disgusting. But I will post some picture updates of house progress. My mom reminded me that I never posted an "after" picture of the fence.

You may notice the the fence boards are different colors...the pretty tan ones are new, and the others are re-used. It saved a lot of money!

We cleaned out the area behind the play set. I'm pretty sure that I got my poison ivy when we did that. It does look MUCH better now!

And we spent some time working on our storage room a week ago, so we could move everything out of our downstairs living room! Yay!

Organization makes my heart sing! So thankful to have a hubby that can build new storage shelves with ease!

It's coming along, one step at a time. We are finishing up some patches and painting now! It's starting to look a lot more finished. :)

We've had lots going on the past couple of weeks, so I'm hoping to post more updates soon!

Love, the George family