Taggity-tag-tag

I've been tagged by Michelle over at Lollypops and Lizards! I usually forget to do the assignment when I get tagged - but I am turning over a new leaf - I am doing this one.


Here's the rules!
1) Go to your photo files…Select the 6th photo folder
2) Select the 6th photo in that folder
3) Post that photo along with the story behind it.
4) Then challenge 5 blog friends to do the same.


Here is my photo ...

It's my favorite piece of furniture - and this picture was taken in our townshouse. (Ahhh ... our first home ... our townhouse ... a place I loved and I miss everyday. Not that I don't love our home now - it's just that when you go from a 12 year old townhouse with a brand new pale yellow and white kitchen that you installed yourself ... to a 55 year old house with dark brown 70s kitchen with ugly flower wallpaper and an electric stove that burns EVERYTHING you cook on it ... you tend to get a little nostalgic.)

The hutch was decorated for Chrismas and I love looking at it. All those plaid dishes and platters and mugs I bought on sale at Target for like 70% off the year before. (You love it, Tiff!) I collect (collected) snowmen and had them displayed in little vignettes all over the dining room and living room. Did I mention this was before the girls?

Right now it is empty. We just haven't had a chance to load it back up again (with my pretty dishes) since the floors were done. This is what it will look like soon ...

I want to get the dishes back in this weekend - I am having Twin Club over next Thursday and would like this place to look lived in.

I am tagging who-ever-so-wishes to participate. Let me know if you do.

I forgot how bad paint smells

The living room is almost done! Just three coats left (one on ceiling, two on walls) plus some touch ups here and there. The wall on the stairs probably won't be done in time for the girls' party - but as long as the main area is done I'll be happy.

Once the party is over we will put the boxes of hardwood (which are now in our garage) into the living room and dining room so they can acclimate to to the temp in here. I'm hoping to have the guys come back on the 13th or so to start that. Demo is going to be another mess - we have to rip up the existing hardwood in the living room first. "Why are you ripping up hardwood to put some right back down again, Rose?" I hear you all saying.

Our dining room is an addition (completed way before we got here) and there is only subfloor under the carpet. We are laying down prefinished hardwood (so we don't have to go through the whole sanding/laquering mess) and if we don't change the flooring in the living room then the two rooms won't match. They have a common floor that flows into each room. It'll just look plain silly.

We had the prefinised hardwood in the townhouse and we loved it. It's 100% real wood, so in the future if we decided to sand and refinish we can still do that.

Here are some pics of the guys in action - and Andy putting up the insulation. My favorites are when they are vacuuming my floor. :)

Who left the freezer door open?

Um ... that would be me.

OK, not MEEEEE - but a too-large Carvel ice cream cake box. I walked down to the basement this afternoon to get some water from the extra fridge we keep down there. On the floor - aforementioned Carvel box - and the top freezer door WIDE OPEN. Everything soft and warm as could be. And smelly.

I called Andy to see if he went down to the basement in the morning - at least to get an idea of how long it was open (for energy purposes - the food is beyond saving) and he hadn't been down there all morning. Which means the door was open since probably last night. Ugh.

There really wasn't anything in there that was super expensive - I didn't start shopping for food for the girls party yet (see post below) - thank goodness. But still!

Garbage doesn't pick up until Tuesday, so we decided to just close the door - TIGHT - and empty it out Monday night. We have too many animal critters who would have a feast. I'll wash it out then, too and hopefully it won't be too smelly.

Then I can start filling it back up! hehehehehehehe ....

Some things are really organized and some things are really not

I just did my monthly (or so) clean-up of my "Favorites" folder on my computer. I must favorite about 20 things a day - even if it's something I think I may only need once ever again and it was easy to find when I searched it in the first place. I have been favoriting digiscrap sites like crazy lately, especially the ones with the really great freebies. Some of the designers are totally my style - realistic looking designs - the elements look like the real thing ... while other designers are much too cartoony for me. I favorite them anyway, though!

I have a ton of folders, and they are all named crazy things. "So so sites" ... "Things to read when I'm bored" ... "Wacky Blogs" ... just to name a few. So now it is all nice and organized and I can find my wacky blogs whenever I so choose.

What is not organized in my life right now is my inventory! You know - the things you need to keep a house (and family) running on a daily basis. Like toliet paper. And razors. I am down to two rolls of the former and using a throwaway worthy version of the latter. As in it needs to be thrownaway. My favorite soap is all gone (Dove) so I am using Andy's Lever 2000 which does NOT leave my skin feeling sliky smooth. It leaves my skin feeling like a rubber tire. I have the feeling he uses my Dove - which is why I feel like I buy it all the time but never have any at all - and then pulls out the L2000 when there's nothing else left. If you like the Dove, use the Dove! Let's stop buying the rubber soap!

Andy works late every night (tax season) and we have a Stop'n'Shop close by, so he'll call me before he leaves (9:30pm-ish) to see if we need bananas and milk - staples for the little ladies. I never remember to tell him we need about a dozen other things, too.

So I am going to do inventory today, just like when I worked at The Disney Store, and send a list over to Mr. Andy Man. Except LOST is on tonight, so he won't go to the store until tomorrow.

One more day of rubber skin.

An epiphany!

(Before I begin this post - I found my lens cap! Thank you to everyone who sent happy thoughts my way or prayed to St. Anthony! Thank you St. Anthony!)

Have I mentioned how excited I am about my living room getting "done"? We have been in this house over a year and besides the playroom (which took us 6 months to renovate on our own) only the dining room is painted.

Once the hardwood floors are in I really feel like I can start getting things prettied up. I haven't even loaded my "good plates" into my teeny china cabinet because I didn't want to have to unload them all again when we DID get the floors done. We technically could have hung things on the wall in the dining room already, but have I mentioned how after the girls go to bed we collapse on the couch at night?

My cabinet now, filled with pictures ...

(Notice the dead plant, the sewing maching in the corner, and the girls' toys on the top. Those are the toys I confiscate when the girls fight over them. Bye-bye.)

Our front door opens right into our living room - no entryway or anything.
Blah. Ugly peach walls (sorry if you have peach walls and love them!). I have a beautiful mirror that I will hang on the wall to the left of the stairs. When we lived in the townhouse, this is what it looked like ... (decorated at Christmas).



This dresser now holds the TV and media paraphenalia in the girls' playroom. It's nice and sturdy and won't fall over. Of course I had Andy bolt it into a stud in the wall, too. Of course!

I am one of those (nutso?) people who don't like shoes in the house. I know ... I never liked those people either. But after I married Andy and he described to me in detail what he walked through when he worked in Manhattan, and then we had the girls, I quickly became a believer. So right now we have a chair that we keep near the front door so people have a place to sit while they are taking off their shoes. Last night when I couldn't fall back to sleep at 3:00 in the morning, I had an epiphany.

A bench would be perfect on that wall!

I can still hang the mirror over it, and then get those boot trays to go underneath so that there is a place for people to put their shoes after they take them off. I'm diggin' the style above, especially those drawers, but not really the stain color of the wood. I like a more natural, bare look. I'll have to dig around a little more to find exactly what I am looking for. There is an unfinished wood store by me - so that will be my first stop.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On another note, four families that I know are going through some hard times right now. I don't want to get into specifics, but if you could keep them in your thoughts and prayers I would appreciate it.

Doors - Wonderous Doors!

My back doors are being replaced as I type this. They are doing a spectacular fantastic amazing job considering that this house has only one straight wall in the place - wait, no it doesn't.

They started yesterday and are finishing up today. The old doors leaked in air somethin' awful - I could not get this house warm if it was a windy day.

We have been shuffling the girls all over the house to keep them away from the cold air, especially since they are still sick. We let them watch for a while and they got a kick out of there not being a door. "Windy!" Maddie said. "Snooooow ..." came from Katie. And yes, it is currently snowing. And the contractors are cursing at it. It's hysterical.

The playroom door is all done - and something was bothering me about it but couldn't put my finger on it. Then it hit me. We had new storm doors installed, also, and they are the kind that have a pull down screen built right in. So the door is essentially cut in half with a white bar ...

The entry door is a "nine-light" (oh yes ... I know my door terminology) ...But when you close the doors together, the "middle line" doesn't line up. (I don't think that's a proper door term.)

I thought I had made a mistake and should have known when I was shopping to make sure that this line matched. So I asked one contractor, Mr. Jim, and he said, nope - that's how they're made. So that made me feel better at least.

Working on the kitchen in the above pic.

Next job: living room. There are many cracks in there that are beyond Andy's level of experience (sorry, hon). We are also having hard wood floors installed!!!!!!! !!!!!!! !!!!!!! (many exclamation points required) And a new ceiling with highhats! And it looks as if the fireplace is leaning into the room - and that's not something I even want to think about.

So Mr. Jim and his brother Mr. Matt hopefully will be back here in a few weeks to get that work done. Then I'll write a post called, "Living Room - Wonderous Living Room" ...

Happy New Year, everyone!

All I did was go to the kitchen to make dinner