I’ve finally found myself with the camera and some time to upload photos! Without further ado, pics of our bedroom makeover. It’s not 100% where I’d like it, but I only spent $50 bucks to change the whole thing, so I figure it’s not too bad. Click on any photo to read my extensive notes.

Among the places that gather clutter in our house, the entry area would be towards the top of the list. Sunday, I decided it was time to change all this, so I gave it thorough cleaning (I think we put away 12 pair of shoes) and prepped it for painting. I was toying with painting it red, to tie in my vintage theater chairs on the opposite wall, but I decided to go with the same green from the dining room. (It occurs to me that I’ve never posted photos. I’m terrible, but someday, I promise.) I decided this because I’m lazy and had a whole gallon of green paint and no red paint.

After the painting was done (so fast!) I added a couple more organizational baskets to the wall and took away the small end table that gathered so much crap. I’m pretty happy with the result and all I wish for you, my dear readers, was that I was not so lazy to walk the block to Tangle to pick up my D50 to take a decent photo.

I’ve been trying to get this house organized. It’s been really hard with the kids, they can make a mess much faster than I can clean it. And it’s been especially difficult to keep all their toys organized. Some time ago I went through and separated all the coordinating toys into big lidded bins. But since I’m not here all the time, Other People that I may be married to let them get more than one toy out of the closet at a time. And while it’s been really great that Other People help pick up the play room, Other People don’t sort through the toys and put them back into the bins they belong in. You see my dilemma?

As the weather has been getting colder, I’ve been sorting through the kids clothes that don’t fit anymore or that won’t fit next year. They’ve ended up in a big pile in the hallway. One pile for clothes that I want to keep in case we have another baby or for my sisters future children and one pile of clothes that I want to pass on to someone else. Needless to say, the hallway has been a mess for some time now. That is until I found the most wonderful invention, Giant Ziploc bags. I’d seen them advertised on t.v., but I didn’t realize how great they were. I fit SO much into one, it’s made from strong plastic, the zip seems really sturdy and… it fit SO much!

Now the kids clothes are all stored away and I packed away my summer clothes and stored them under the bed. I’ve still got a ways to go on getting the whole house organized (I have to say, I wish we had an Ikea SO MUCH) but it’s nice to be making a dent.

Friday Jim took the day off and we had a nice leisurely day of shopping at Target and drinking coffee. We came home and put the kids down for a nap and I walked over to get a pattern from the yarn store while Jim took a little nap of his own. Little did we know that when we thought Honor was sleeping, he was instead finger painting with the contents of his diaper. All over the carpet. Again. I guess he got bored with it, because he decided to go ahead and take his nap, commando.

And that’s how I found him. Sleeping peacefully with poop smeared EVERYWHERE. I just turned right around and walked away… for his own safety. So I decided that I didn’t want to scrub any more poop off the carpet. I think that this is the fourth? time he did this? And I decided that I was done. So I convinced Jim that we needed to rip out the carpet. RIGHT THAT MINUTE. And that’s what we did. I had peeled up a tiny bit of the carpet around the heating duct and saw what I thought was a pretty decently finished hardwood floor. But, yeah, not so much. What I actually found was this:

(Sorry, no photos of the room with carpet, I’m trying real hard to keep from posting pictures of feces on the internet.)

By this point, Jim was quite unhappy. So I dug through the paint closet and found some leftover paint from the kids walls. He helped me get all the carpet tack up and I got the floor all cleaned up and the first coat of paint on it. We ran to Home Depot to wait in line for 45 minutes for more paint and then got more coffee and came back home to finish the floor.

It was seriously the easiest project I’ve ever done. (Thankfully.) And it’s left me with a renewed desire for home improvement. I’ve got plans for all the walls in my house now. I’m just afraid any other project will tarnish the memory of this perfect project. If only Honor would poop on the floor more often. Yeah. Not really.

Is it sad that I cleaned the windows of the house for the first time… in FOUR years? Now every time I walk by I’m shocked by how clean they are, it’s like the difference between wearing glasses and not.

And now I have a bathroom to clean…

I just can’t believe how crazy busy things are around here lately. Today, after I got home from the office, I tried to focus on outside. I planted all my flower seeds in the back (haven’t gotten to the front yet) and I painted the front steps. They needed it!

I’m really happy with the color I chose.

I’m thinking of painting the door the same color… hmmm.. we’ll see.

Notice how the bush is overtaking the front porch? Last year Jim hacked the poor bush so bad that my mother begged him to never “trim” the bush ever again. She said that next time it needed trimming that she would come do it. But here it is over taking the steps. (hint, hint, Mom) Jim’s threatening to trim it himself.

It’s just phenomenally amazing HOW much work the yard is! Especially when the kids are dragging their toys all over the stinking place.

One of the joys of owning an old house (built 1895) is all the quirks that come along with it. Our house has the tiniest bathroom, with no room to expand. To try to liven up the space, I’ve painted it many times. The first time I painted the whole thing a rich blue and the ceiling and trim lime green. Last spring when we tried to sell the house, the realtor told us that we needed to paint it, so I painted the whole thing white. White to match the white floor, white cabinet, white shower curtain and the white towels. Talk about boring.

Ever since we decided to refinance rather than sell, I’ve been wanting to paint the bathroom again. (Not that I’ve really been wanting to experience the joy of painting, but I’m so sick of the boring white that I will suffer through more painting.) Every time my friend, Brooke (hi, Brooke!), goes on break (she’s a teacher on a year round schedule) we have to do a project. We’ve made marble magnets, knitted, made soap, made bagels and this year we decided to paint our bathrooms.

I know what you’re thinking, if I’m painting my bathroom, Honor will be locked out of it for a whole day and that means that he will not have any toilet time. For shame! But not to worry, he got plenty of toilet time in before hand, the day before he threw my comb and a waffle in there. And the morning of, he threw his socks in. The withdrawals were a little hard on him, but he suffered through.

I forgot to bring my camera to take pictures of Brookes bathroom (and later I remembered that we both had camera phones -duh-).
Here’s mine before:

And after:

Notice that the kids are playing in the water? Nothing unusual.

You should be proud, look at all the stuff I did this week!

First off, the kitchen floor (I didn’t do all this myself of course.)

Before

Close up of the floor before

After

I made 25 tubes of lip balm and they’re already sold.

I knit this scarf for myself. This will soon be avaliable to purchase.

I finished this poncho for my cousins daughter, Taylor. I had Madison try it on to see how it would fit Taylor and now I have to make her one too.

And finally, a hat for my step sister in law to be.

We had quite the busy weekend. Most of it was spent at Target. We’ve been wanting to do something new with our dresser. I took a picture of it, but I’m too embarrassed to show the internet. Just believe me when I say it was bad.

We decided that we wanted to go to some kind of shelving unit, instead of a dresser. This is mostly because Jim had five hundred billion t-shirts. Which often results in the desired t-shirt being WAY at the bottom of the drawer, leading to his tearing through the dresser drawer and causing me to wonder why I even bother to fold said t-shirts. With our new shelving unit, he can see every one of his five hundred billion t-shirts and leave everything nice and neat (in theory anyway.)

Notice the new TV. We argued for a week about whether we needed a new TV. Jim, of course was convinced that we needed a 27″ television for the bedroom and I was happy to keep the old (very old) one we had. We finally compromised on the 20″ Target special. Now, of course, Jim feels like we need a surround system. For the BEDROOM. I think not.

On to more important matters. Knitting. I’ve finished my brown with gold flecks scarf.

I also made my first mitten. I’m quite proud of myself. It was actually much easier than I anticipated. The pattern is Super Mittens from Weekend Knitting.

These mittens will match my tan, seafoam and brown scarf.